


The Descent

by twistedservice



Series: The Fabled [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, F/F, F/M, General tomfoolery, It's All Downhill From Here Folks (per the title), Multi, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Road Trips, Supernatural Elements, someone put me in time-out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-02-15 21:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 85,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18677506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedservice/pseuds/twistedservice
Summary: The journey into hell always begins with a body.What does it end with?





	1. One Missed Call

**Body #1:** Found twenty minutes after the fact by their eight year old sibling, screaming in the pouring rain.

—

—

—August 11th, 2018.

Dimara can count on one hand the amount of times she’s been alone in the past two months.

That in itself is a frightening realization. She had those few days, quiet solitude in a very hectic and suddenly sparse world after her grandmother died. The apartment was quiet and her head even quieter and it had felt so foreign.

But not as foreign as being alone right now.

They haven’t even been properly separated for forty-eight hours. She packed them all up and rented cars and made sure phones were plentiful and sent them all off. It was an easy choice, to be the one alone. But it still ached in a way she hadn’t expected it to.

The number of names she’s tracked down in a grand total of thirty-three hours is astonishing, even to her. The hunting families keep to themselves, that much is true, but they don’t hide. Why hide, when everything around you knows your power?

The Amantea’s are as close to Maine’s number one crime family as you can get. The Monette’s are small but close-knit, raising their kids from birth to protect and hunt, fight and kill. The Zidane’s are not small at all, and they’re the ones responsible for the coven killing in Augusta, two years ago.

She’s written down a lot of names. Distant relatives to young adults still living under the roof of the known patriarch. There’s so many of them, small or not. Any one of them could have been the messenger.

It could be someone she hasn’t found.

But it could be someone she has.

She’s seen four of them, from a distance. Two older, at least in their forties, wandering the streets and talking quietly under their breath, the line of their shoulders still strong and fortified. A young girl, no older than fifteen, crowded onto a bench waiting for a bus with a gaggle of her friends. And someone her age, she’s sure, in and out of the same café four times on the tenth, and three times today, messenger bag always over her shoulder, headphones in.

But she smiles at everyone she passes by. Held the door open for an older gentleman stepping inside.

It seems like the safest prospect.

Dimara just doesn’t know if that’s the truth, yet.

—

—

—August 12th, 2018.

Operation: Infiltrate Coffee Shop, seems way too simple.

Maybe she’s just over-tired, already. She hadn’t slept well at all last night. Blair had text her at three in the morning, something about being bored, and all she had the energy to do was text him back a sleeping emoji and then ignore him until the sun came up.

Like she said. Not even two full days.

They already don’t know how to exist without each-other.

Dimara switches her car into a different spot, not far down the road. Better not to look suspicious. There are enough people on the streets of Portland so early in the morning that someone would be bound to notice, if they looked closely enough. Luckily for her not many people do.

By the time she gets inside it’s already packed to the brim with people on their early morning rush, which is just asinine for the middle of August. But this is about the same time the girl’s showed up both mornings, too, so Dimara hovers not-entirely anxiously by the door and waits, as people come and go, shoving past her in order to quicken their journey back into reality.

That’s what this place feels like. Another world entirely, loud and bustling like the stairs leading down to a subway train, like they’re not in Portland that all.

The girl edges into her field of view, appearing on the sidewalk, and Dimara side-steps into the line. The guy next to her gives her a dirty look, quickly stepping forward to overtake her. She keeps her eyes firmly forward and knows without looking that the girl sweeps through the door and stops behind her, waiting patiently in line.

That’s the thing – she doesn’t look irritated. Just knowing. Expectant.

The line’s really not that long. There’s just so many people milling around, waiting for their order to be filled, or waiting for someone to vacate a seat long enough for them to snatch it up. She can’t turn around, because that would mean basically looking her in the eye, but if she doesn’t there’s no way to actually initiate anything.

She really hasn’t thought this through as well as she should have.

It’s only been two days. She didn’t think it would be this easy, but they’re just people. Regular humans who kill people on the side, whoever they please.

The guy in front of her fires off his order to the very frazzled looking barista quicker than she can even hear him, and she pauses. She hasn’t even looked at the menu once.

Apparently, she didn’t think this through either.

He drops a handful of change on the counter and moves over, enough for Dimara to step forward. That still doesn’t help her predicament. There’s about six dozen things to look at, and as soon as the barista is done ringing in the order she’s looking up at Dimara expectantly, eyes wide, waiting for something. Anything.

She’s got nothing.

But she can work with that.

She whirls around. The girl’s got one headphone out and looks up at her, clearly not expecting such a sudden turn of the tide.

“You can go,” she says in a rush. “I don’t – I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, seriously. I’ll be here for another hour deciding.”

“I don’t mind waiting—”

“Go,” she insists, and shuffles over, but not very far. The girl steps past her, smiling in amusement, and rattles something off as quickly as the other guy did. Dimara expects that to be the end of that, but at least it’s something. It’s a start.

She’s not prepared for the girl to grab her arm, gently, and tug her off to the opposite counter, where everyone’s collecting their drinks. She blinks, half alarm and half confusion, as she gets pulled through the crowd until the girl lets go of her.

“Sorry,” she says, almost looking like she’s about to laugh. “I know this place is confusing, if you’re not from around here. I got you something – nothing crazy. Hope that’s alright?”

Dimara stares. That’s… oddly touching?

And she’s still being stared a,t too. The girl is smiling, but it turns down for a second the longer she goes without a response. Dimara may be staring back, but there’s absolutely nothing of substance running through her brain.

That’s – that’s just great.

“I’m from around here,” she manages. “Just never been here before.”

She glances back towards the barista, who looks to be about six orders deep. “Did you pay?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry about it.”

Again, just great. Dimara doesn’t even have any money on her to give back, her brain’s not owing her any favors, and this girl is way too nice for Dimara to even consider dragging her outside and threatening her poor life.

“Will you be back again tomorrow?” she asks, and the girl looks up at her.

“Probably later today, honestly. My family’s nuts about this place. But same time tomorrow morning for sure.”

“Then I’ll come back too. Buy you one in return.”

The girl positively fucking beams at her, and Dimara is pretty sure a very small part of her either ascends or melts into the floor itself. She’s not listening at _all w_ hen someone behind the counter yells something, but two seconds later there’s a cup being thrust at her, and she just manages to grab at it.

“Sorry to run off on you so fast,” she says. “But my sisters are waiting outside, so—”

So that explains all three other cups in the tray. “No problem. See you tomorrow?”

She’s already skirting around her, headed for the door, but she turns around and waves with her free hand. “Of course! Hope you like it!”

Right. Dimara’s still very stupidly holding onto the drink that this girl just bought her without asking, so she takes a very exaggerated sip. It burns her whole mouth, and her tongue along with it, but it earns her another smile before she disappears out onto the sidewalk, leaving Dimara alone in a place she would have never stepped foot in otherwise.

She puts the cup down on the nearest available counter and rubs at her face, sighing.

All things considered, that was alright. It definitely could have went better, but she successfully got another conversation with her, another meeting. She’s having a lot of difficulty wrapping her brain around that of a vicious, cold-blooded hunter and this girl, but it has to be the truth. She’s not wrong about this.

She goes to grab at the cup again, and her fingers brush against the name on the side, hastily scrawled across the side.

_KALI._

Well. That she can remember.

—

—

—August 13th, 2018.

The coffee’s not half-bad.

Thankfully the barista seems to remember what it was, when it’s not so busy the next morning, so Dimara orders that and whatever complicated concoction that Kali put together and parks herself at the corner table ten minutes before she’s supposed to show up.

There’s a million and a half reasons this could end terribly, but she doesn’t think Kali’s the type to escalate a situation to that point.

And besides, she doesn’t need to know. She never will.

Dimara still spends every single one of her minutes convinced that she’s getting screwed with. She checks her phone half a dozen times, at least. Everyone checked in this morning with her, to ask her how it was going.

She said she’d get back to them.

Kali comes flying in like a tornado fifteen minutes later and nearly falls onto the other chair in her haste to sit down. “Sorry, sorry. Couldn’t find anywhere to park.”

She smiles. Kali flings her purse onto the table and nearly knocks over both of their coffees.

She doesn’t think Kali’s half-bad, either.

But you won’t catch her saying that.

—

—

—August 17th, 2018.

So that becomes their thing.

Kali sits there for two hours with her that first day, talking and talking. She talks quite a lot, but Dimara doesn’t mind. She also listens, spectacularly, even if Dimara’s spewing out nothing but nonsense, about where she lives and what she does and what’s going on in her life. All lies.

Kali also writes, too, she learns the next day. Sits at any available table and puts her music on and writes, about anything. She likes photography and she got accepted to go to Yale straight out of high school but didn’t, because she felt she had to stay with her family.

Dimara doesn’t even learn what that family is, until the fifteenth. Kali elbows her out of the way to pay, fishing a card out of her wallet, and she sees the last name – Zidane.

It’s a relief, to know that she hasn’t wasted all this time.

But it’s also not.

That witch coven was probably Kali’s initiation test. She was certainly there, if anything. Old enough to handle herself in such a violent situation. She talks about her family, but not like they’re hunters. About how close they are and the names of her sisters and her grandfather, who would clear this place out of their pastries if he had the chance to.

Dimara starts to feel guilty, right around then. About a lot of things.

She can’t tell Kali anything. Not anything important, anyway. All the things she wants to talk about are off-limits, and are things Kali would kill her for.

The longer Dimara starts to look the more she starts to recognize herself. Kali’s got the steady hands of someone used to holding a weapon, that sharp narrowed look in her eyes, like a hawk watching a mouse through the tall grass.

It’s terrifying.

It’s more terrifying that she likes her, more than she should.

Sometimes they don’t even talk, like right now. Kali’s got one headphone in and is tapping away at her laptop. Dimara finished her coffee a half hour ago but isn’t sure what else to do besides answer Celia’s very poor attempts at texting. She’s not sure why getting her a phone ever seemed like a good idea, because it definitely wasn’t.

“Alright, time for me to head out,” she announces, and Dimara snaps up. “Uncle needs me for something. Tomorrow?”

She nods, desperately wanting to ask her what her uncle needs her for, exactly. Not that Kali would tell her. She should just be upfront about it – ask what color their seal is, ask Kali what she knows about the threats, if anything at all. Leave it at that.

She can’t bring herself to do it.

Doing this is draining her. She feels it deep inside her, already, because Kali packs her things up and waves goodbye and Dimara can’t even move out of the chair. She wants to go back home. Even the apartment would be better than this, alone and quiet as it may be. She’s sick and tired, already, of sleeping in the car. Of talking to a girl who she can’t ever really trust, even though she wants to.

Operation: Infiltrate Coffee Shop has quickly morphed into Operation: Keep Your Enemies Closer, and Kali already doesn’t feel like an enemy.

Dimara sighs, grabs her things, and heads back for the car.

—

—

—August 18th, 2018.

Someone’s knocking on her window.

Living out of your car is not a fun experience, as she's come to discover. She could get a room at any number of hotels, but a permanent location for someone aggressively inserting themselves into the businesses of very dangerous families probably isn't very wise.

She can fit everything in her car, anyway. She's not getting an entirely safe amount of sleep every night, but that's a sacrifice she's willing to make.

It started raining at about eight. The sky went dark not long after, the street lights dim. There's a few shops still open, but everything seems abnormally quiet. Strange, because it's not helping her sleep any.

In hindsight, that's probably the only reason she hears the knock the first time, over the rain. It's loud but her head is louder, and something had to come along eventually that would be determined enough to pull her out of it.

She looks up, and Kali is standing just outside the door, fist raised to knock again.

Her first thought is dread, as icy as the rain itself dumped into her veins. Something akin to terror, next up, even though Kali doesn't and has never looked particularly threatening since they met. It still takes Dimara several seconds to roll the window down, slowly, rain pattering all over her bare arm.

"Hey," Kali says, slightly breathless. It doesn't look like her jacket or the umbrella she's clinging tightly to are doing anything. "Didn't think anyone drank coffee this late."

Dimara thinks of half a dozen stupid, witty things to say, and not one of them actually comes up. She's left staring at Kali like an idiot, mouth slightly agape, knowing already that there's no way to hide the duffel bag full of clothes strewn all over the backseat. The bag with her weapons is at least slightly concealed, half-tucked under her own seat, but it's still incriminating. She was just half-asleep in her car, after all.

Kali's slight smile has turned down to an even smaller frown, eyes flicking to the back-seat.

Dimara's been fucked before, but not quite like this.

“I shouldn’t,” she says, and offers a smile. “But you’ve got me hooked.”

It’s safe to say that doesn’t work. She spent too long panicking, and when Kali looks back to her she knows it. There’s a lot of pieces falling into place for her right now. None that are really the truth, save for the fact that Dimara’s officially been discovered living out of her car by the girl she’s supposedly tailing.

“You shouldn’t stand outside in the rain for so long—”

“Can I get in?”

She blinks, trying to wrap her head around what Kali just said. Not the words themselves, but the implications. Her hand drifts down to the lock anyway, and Kali goes from standing framed by her window to the other side of the car in record time, already wrenching the passenger door open. She slips in, shaking her umbrella furiously onto the sidewalk before she slams the door shut.

Dimara isn’t entirely sure what to say.

“You know how to get to Oakdale?” Kali asks. “Falmouth street?”

Oakdale’s a neighbourhood not very far from here. Dimara’s only driven through it maybe half a dozen times, but she knows it. She nods. Kali settles back into her seat and goes to peering back out the window, silent. Dimara stares at the side of her face, watches little raindrops roll down from her temple. She doesn’t say anything else.

Dimara sighs and starts the car.

—

—

—

She’s not surprised when Kali directs her off of Falmouth into the parking lot of an apartment complex.

That still doesn’t stop her from pulling into the first available spot she sees and then adamantly refusing to move, even when Kali unbuckles her seatbelt and gives her a pointed look.

“I’m good out here,” she says, and Kali rolls her eyes.

“I’m serious,” she insists. “You don’t have to like – let me stay with you. Or whatever it is you think you’re doing. You don’t have to.”

“I know I don’t _have_ to. I want to.”

Dimara’s honestly just very relieved that Kali’s not asking her why exactly she’s living as if she’s currently homeless, because that’s something she hasn’t worked out a proper explanation for just yet. She’d have to drive off and leave Kali standing alone in the parking lot if that question were to arise.

A prospect she still hasn’t fully casted aside just yet.

Kali gets out. The rain has softened to a patter, but the breeze when Kali opens the back door to reach for her bag is stronger than ever. Dimara panics, almost worse than before, and throws herself out of the car in her haste to keep Kali away from all the knives she’s got under the seat. That’s one way to blow a cover.

Kali does nothing more than stuff the few things that have struggled their way out back in, before she pulls the duffle bag out and shoulders it. Dimara discreetly nudges the other bag even further under the seat.

“C’mon,” Kali instructs, and Dimara isn’t really left with much of a choice. Kali is striding away with all of her shit in tow, already reaching most certainly for a key to get into the building, and now Dimara’s following her, like a complete idiot.

She only manages to tug the bag out of Kali’s grip once they’re safely inside, the door locked tight behind them. She can’t run. Kali would probably catch her, anyway.

She follows her up one flight of stairs, to apartment 294, and looks around anxiously as Kali fiddles with the door. The stairs leading down. A bay window at the end of the hall, overlooking the lot. An emergency door just before that, red EXIT sign half-blurred out. There are a few other doors down the hall, all the same.

“Hey,” Kali says quietly, and Dimara turns back to be greeted with the sight of Kali holding the door open while she stands there, gawking.

Figuring out escape routes, more like.

It becomes more abundantly clear by the second that Kali’s following her in, not the other way around. She still doesn’t trust Dimara not to book it the second her back is turned. She edges around her into the apartment, struggling to keep her breathing in check. It’s normal. Kitchen, living room. Hallway leading to somewhere she can’t see. Not nearly enough windows.

“I didn’t expect you to live someplace like this,” she says.

“Some place like what?”

Half of her expected Kali to still live in the grand old family home, wherever it may be. Fitted perfectly into a life of luxury where she belongs. While the apartment isn’t dingy, it’s certainly not anything special. Not something fit for a Zidane, for hunter royalty. Kali has already proved her wrong in so many ways, and she only continues to do so.

She flicks on all the lights in the entryway. “My roommate’s not here right now. She’ll probably be back in a few hours. I don’t think she’ll care, but I’ll get you set up on the couch. Hope you don’t mind, but we’ve only got two rooms.”

Roommate. That’s – interesting? That’s the only word that will come to mind. That could be disastrous. Sleeping on the couch is the least of her problems, in the midst of all this.

“Sounds good,” she manages, and Kali smiles. She did not expect to cave so readily, not to a girl like this.

Then again, what kind of girl even is Kali?

What kind of girl is _she_ , nowadays?

She stands there awkwardly, shuffling her feet back and forth. It’s not terribly late, but she watches Kali drag some extra blankets from the hall closet and retrieve a pillow, draping them all across the largest couch into something that almost resembles a bed. Regardless of what it looks like, it’s still much better than what Dimara had planned on sleeping on tonight.

The front seat of her car had really gotten much more use than she was anticipating. Perhaps she should buy a new one, with all the money she had now.

Like she said, it’s not all that late, but Kali steps forward and puts a hand on her arm while she’s in the process of staring very dazedly at the couch, wondering how the hell she ended up here.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Kali asks, and she nods blankly. She doesn’t think she’s okay. She’s sleep-deprived and running on too much caffeine and now she’s sleeping under the enemy’s roof like it’s her old apartment, like it’s the place she never really got to mourn properly once she left it.

She can’t quite tell if she’s awake or asleep, anymore. That’s what leaving everyone else has done to her.

“I think you should sleep,” Kali says. “Bathroom’s first door on the right. If you need me I’m the one across from it. Like I said, my roommate should be back soon, but hopefully she doesn’t wake you up.”

“You really don’t think she’ll care?”

“No. I told her about you. I think you guys will get along.”

Kali told her roommate that they met. That they’ve been talking. That seems like it should hit her, more than it is, but she can’t raise enough energy to be upset by it. Kali doesn’t know the type of people she gets along with, doesn’t know what her almost-family consists of now.

But maybe she knows something.

She nods again, and Kali gently steers her down the hall and to the bathroom. She changes mechanically, into the first things that even remotely resemble pajamas. Kali’s gone by the time she slips back out into the hall, but her door is cracked open, and Dimara doesn’t feel so terrified when she lets herself lay back on the couch, dropping the duffle bag next to it.

She already feels so comfortable, but she drags a blanket up to her chin and then tugs her phone out one last time, the screen flaring to life.

 _I think I’m fucked_ , she texts Celia, unaware in that moment of what it’s even supposed to mean.

She glances around. This could solve a lot of her problems or create even more. She’s not sure what prospect is more terrifying. This could be the key she needed, the in that she was waiting for.

 _good or bad?_ Celia answers, and Dimara doesn’t know which option seems more like the truth.

She turns the screen off and goes to sleep.

—

—

—August 19th, 2018.

Dimara wakes up, and someone’s staring at her.

She almost doesn’t recognize the person-shaped slump sprawled out across the armchair at first, eyes blurred over from sleep, limbs still weighed down by exhaustion and the blankets that are tangled around them. She probably wouldn’t have noticed at all, if they hadn’t uncrossed their legs and then coughed, rather loudly.

“So, you’re Coffee Girl?” Stranger girl asks, and Dimara sits up so fast she knocks her phone onto the floor, her legs unable to find any real purchase on the couch.

“What?” she asks stupidly. “I don’t— who are you?”

“I think the proper question is _what_ am I.”

Dimara goes still, giving up on her struggle to escape the blankets. The girl gets up and looks as if she’s about to disappear into the kitchen. She drops both of her arms down on the back of the couch instead, leaning in too close for Dimara’s liking. In fact, she passed too close the second Dimara woke up.

“Or should I ask what _you_ are?”

“Extremely confused?” she replies, very thankful that her voice doesn’t crack, and the girl snorts. She knows. She knows Dimara isn’t human and Kali may not be present but Dimara’s pretty sure she’s dead, once Kali _is_ present.

“Relax, would you? I’m not going to tattle.”

“Where is she?” Dimara asks, alarmed at how loud they’re both being.

“At the store. She’ll be back any minute. So, is there anything we need to get straight before that happens?”

“You’re not human,” she says flatly, and the girl shrugs. “You’re— you’re her roommate, and she’s a hunter. She’s a _Zidane_. Why are you under the same roof as her?”

“Why are _you_?” she fires back, and Dimara realizes just how hypocritical she’s being. If this girl truly isn’t human, then Dimara can’t be accusing her of things she’s already doing herself. She can’t possibly be angry at this girl for it. Bewildered, definitely, but that’s an emotion she’s been feeling a lot of recently.

“I got threatened,” she says in a rush, keeping an eye on the door. “I don’t know by who. I don’t know if it was her family or one of the others.”

“But you’re trying to figure it out?”

She’s an idiot. She’s the stupidest person in the world. Why is she telling this to someone that apparently doesn’t even have a name? She’ll tell Kali. Or worse. Dimara has no reason to trust her.

But Dimara doesn’t have anyone to trust, right now.

“What color is her family’s sigil?” she asks, and the girl narrows her eyes. Dimara waits for a response. A second later her head swivels around the door, and she waves very cheekily, disappearing into the bathroom.

Another moment passes. The front door opens.

Dimara throws herself onto the couch, praying that Kali doesn’t notice. She fumbles for her phone down on the floor and busies herself with it, even though staring at the series of question marks Celia sent her around midnight really isn’t all that fascinating.

“Oh, you’re awake,” Kali says with a smile, dropping a bag on the counter. “Did you sleep alright?”

“Sure did.”

She was, until she woke up to someone staring at her. She nearly drops her phone on her face, so she misses Kali glancing around, poking her head into the hall.

“Is Oeshe still here?”

Well, unless something extremely strange developed in the middle of night, Oeshe has to be the roommate then. Oeshe who fled to the bathroom heartbeats before Kali walked in, like she knew she was coming.

She probably did. Dimara nods to the bathroom.

“Was she nice to you?”

“Um,” she starts. “Yes?”

Not the right choice of words at all. If only she could have come up with something that was a shred more convincing off the top of her head. Kali rolls her eyes and goes back to sorting her purchases out on the counter. This must be a normal occurrence, then, for Kali to look so unperturbed by it.

She should probably get up and help. Maybe corner Oeshe in the bathroom and whisper about the fact that she’s a very terrible, awful person where Kali can’t hear them.

She flattens her hands over her face where Kali can’t see and resists the urge to scream.

—

—

—

Kali doesn’t let her leave the building the entire day.

Oeshe does, frequently, like she’s trying to rub it in her face. It’s not a bad thing, to be stuck here. Kali’s on a mission to stuff her full of food and make the couch more comfortable and show her where she can do her laundry, coins at her disposable, because Dimara forgot she’s apparently pretending to be homeless.

She can’t get any worse than she’s acting right now.

But after days of sleeping in her car, she can’t deny how nice it is. She’s warm and comfortable. Her clothes don’t smell. Kali is actually a splendid cook and has the fridge full of things that aren’t microwaveable.

It’s basically a miracle.

But nothing can last forever, and she knows that better than most people. Kali finally agrees to sleep at around eleven, content with the knowledge that Dimara’s not going to go running off on her. Oeshe got back sometime after dinner and hasn’t come out of her room since. There’s enough light spilling out from beneath the door that Dimara can tell she hasn’t dropped off into sleep herself. That still doesn’t stop her from hovering outside the door, wondering just exactly what she’s doing.

Oeshe pulls the door open a second later and yanks her inside.

Dimara’s surprised when she shouldn’t be.

“Can I help you?” she asks, and Dimara wriggles free of the hold on her arm so that she can reach back and shut the door.

“Hopefully,” she mutters, and Oeshe sits back down in her chair, wheeling her way back to her laptop. Dimara feels quite ignored, in the moment, and Oeshe seems pretty content to ignore her. She looks around. The walls are empty, most of the furniture bare. Like she’s prepared to get up and run any second. Dimara edges forward and sits on the edge of the bed after a moment, trying to sort out her thoughts.

“I don’t know what color the seal is,” Oeshe says, after a minute passes.

“How can you not?”

“She doesn’t exactly go around advertising it to me. They don’t go around advertising it to anyone, unless you’re an ally or an enemy.”

“You should be an enemy too, if you’re not human.”

“What they don’t know won’t kill them. Or maybe we’ll get lucky, and it will.”

Dimara glances back at the door, like she’s expecting Kali to burst back in at any given moment, kill the both of them for even speaking.

“Why are you here?” she asks quietly.

“Same reason as you, I’m guessing.”

“They threatened you?”

“Her parents killed my grandparents, when they were younger. Murdered them both in the street. That’s a threat, no matter what anyone else says.”

Her parents. Not her. Dimara can’t shake the feeling that Kali cannot possibly be the blood-thirsty, cunning girl she was imagining her as. Oeshe wouldn’t be here either, if she felt she was in that much danger. She’s still being secretive, though – not once has she chosen to offer up any information, about what she is.

“That’s not everything.”

“Sounds like you got a lot of problems,” Oeshe says.

“Someone, a lot of people, maybe, think I had something to do with the Town Council. Me, and people I care about.”

That makes Oeshe swivel back around, finally, eyebrows raised. Finally interested, it seems.

“We didn’t do it,” she insists. “But if someone decides we did—”

“You’re as good as dead.”

She nods. Oeshe frowns.

“So, what do you want me to do about that?”

“I’m trying to figure out what happened. And I have an idea, but I don’t think it’s the whole story. I just don’t know what it is. I need— I need information, need ideas. I just need to figure this out, before something bad happens. Can you help me with that?”

“Nah.”

She nearly gets up off the bad and walks out. You’d think, with the admission of all these truths, that Oeshe would cut her a break, one supernatural creature to another. She still doesn’t think she’s lying about that, and if she isn’t, then Dimara just might have an ally. A friend, down the road, if she ever wants to risk calling her that. Not that she does right now.

Oeshe grins. “Chill. I know someone who might be able to help you.”

She flings herself back onto the bed, and Oeshe laughs. The noise nearly startles her – surely Kali could’ve heard that, despite the lack of noise coming from the rest of the apartment.

“Thank you,” she breathes, and she’s sure Oeshe turns around once again, the typing starting back up. She needs to go get her phone. Needs to text someone that she might have something, that a breakthrough might be just ahead.

“She works at noon,” Oeshe tells her. “Be ready, and we’ll go.”

Noon – God, it’s so far, yet so close. Thirteen hours has never seemed like such a wait before, yet here she is, ready to make it through.

But what choice does she have, at this point?

—

—

—August 20th, 2018.

Kali seems very delighted by the fact that her and Oeshe are going to attempt this whole friendship thing. Dimara can’t tell if it really is a _friendship_ thing.

Nevertheless, Kali seems quite content to leave the two of them to their devices and head off to work, with a promise from Oeshe to keep track of her and bring her back later on, like she’s afraid that Dimara’s going to take off.

To be honest, she’s kind of terrified to run.

Oeshe’s car is beat up to hell and makes so much noise that she’s convinced every single person they drive by stops to stare at them, wondering how such a machine is still in active use, and why two typically sensible young people are choosing to use it.

She doesn’t know why she didn’t think to offer up her own car, but with Oeshe, she’s not about to interject too much.

She pulls up into the first empty space at the curb outside the Portland Public Library, and then gets out with a word before the car has even stopped making noises. Dimara scrambles to follow her, and only catches up when Oeshe is already pulling at the front doors, ready to slip inside.

It’s not like Dimara hasn’t been here before. She has. Just for school purposes, back when that was still a thing. When her friends wanted a place to chill that wasn’t the park or the docks, when it got cold and the winter chased everyone inside. Rarely did she do any actual research here, but how many teenagers really did, back then?

Oeshe moves like she’s been here a thousand times, though. She waves at the older woman behind the front desk but doesn’t say a word to her, continuing on up a flight of stairs and deeper into the library, rapidly escaping the light pouring in from the windows near the sidewalk. Dimara tries to keep an eye out, tries to search in vain for who they could possibly be seeking out, but can’t begin to hazard a guess at it. It could be anyone. For all she knows, Oeshe is fucking with her here.

She’s so busy looking around, trying to pick a stranger out of a crowd of more strangers, that she’s completely unprepared for Oeshe to walk up behind the back of one and punch him in the shoulder. She has to stretch her arm up to even connect, with how tall he is, and he stumbles and drops the book he was holding, nearly knocking over the cart full of them to his right.

“Ow, really?”

“Hey, stupid.”

“You shouldn’t go around calling people stupid. Especially not in a _library._ ”

“Sounds pretty stupid to me,” Oeshe replies easily. “Dimara, Zion. Zion, girl who is now living in my apartment. She needs some help, so have fun.”

“Wait, where are you going?” Dimara asks frantically, as Oeshe starts striding off in the opposite direction. She was not at all prepared for this.

“I’ll be back in an hour!” Oeshe calls over her shoulder, instead of explaining. While it’s relieving to know that she’ll be coming back at all, so Dimara doesn’t have to walk back in the continuous pouring rain, it doesn’t make this any more comfortable. You take her out of a house and suddenly her people skills evaporate into thin air.

“You need help with something?” Zion asks, and she looks up at him. There’s a certain level of certainty in his voice that makes her feel a little bit better, but she still opens and closes her mouth several times, unsure of where to start. Is she just supposed to dump the past month and a half on him, no warning? Chances are he’ll call the cops and get her arrested for that. He works here, or volunteers. That much is obvious. But that doesn’t mean he’s a god-given gift to help her out with this.

He leans down to pick the book up off the floor. “Chances are whatever you’ve got, Oeshe’s told me something weirder. So, if that’s what’s stopping you…”

She takes a deep breath. “How much do you know about demons?”

—

—

—

Library’s have a wealth of information.

Who would’ve thunk it.

Zion’s still working, but he takes her around for the most part and collects random books for her, putting different things away as he goes. Eventually he parks her by the computers with the whole collection of them, in case she needs to look something up, while he disappears after one of his coworkers.

It’s already been an hour.

He’s asked her a lot of questions, but nothing specific enough to get her nervous. Just general things. Some personal stuff, that doesn’t delve deep enough to make her believe that he’s really into prying. She tries to ask him things back, but he doesn’t appear necessarily forthcoming with them. It’s no wonder he works here – he’s quiet. He fits in.

He’s gone a lot, after that, but he wanders by every so often to check on her. Once in a while he’ll have a new book to add to her ever-growing pile and answers any random questions she has.

But that’s about it.

Nearly two hours later, long past the point of designated Oeshe return time, someone sits down at the table across from her. Dimara wouldn’t have noticed at all, absorbed in one of her dozens of books, but the girl’s hair is such a fire engine red that she’d have to be colorblind not to look up. And the girl’s looking right at her, too. Staring openly, unabashed, like Dimara’s behind a glass wall at the zoo, fifty feet away.

“Hi?” she tries, and the girl snorts. Drags one of the books over to her side of the table and looks it over, quickly enough that she doesn’t absorb more than six words of the information.

“Demons are a pain in the ass,” the girl says, and while Dimara wants to agree, she’s mostly just confused.

She’s about to open her mouth and say exactly that when Zion swoops in, like he’s practiced at it. He pulls the chair the girl is sitting in back away from the table, enough to pull her out of it like she weighs hardly nothing at all. She probably doesn’t.

“Oh, c’mon, I wasn’t doing anything,” she complains. “Let me have some fun.”

“Go outside then,” Zion offers. “Don’t bug people I’m trying to help. Or anyone, period.”

“Yeah, right,” she mutters under her breath, but lets Zion pull her from the chair, even if the two of them don’t get very far. He’s talking so quietly to her that Dimara can hardly hear him, but her she can hear loud as day. It’s kind of hard to focus on, with how loud she’s being and how bright her hair is.

“Have you ever considered a more muted hair color?” she asks, and the girl whirls around, sneering.

“Sure tried, but when you’re dead nothing really sticks, you know what I mean?”

Dimara has absolutely no clue what she means, but is really familiar with the feeling of lingering around the word dead, rolling it over in your brain and trying to make sense of it.

“You’re dead?” she asks, and Zion sighs, shoving the girl off and away, through the stacks to some unseen place.

“She— she’s fine,” Zion says, which doesn’t really answer the question.

“But dead,” Dimara continues, and it must be at least partially fine because Zion looks less concerned and more exasperated. Which begs the question of why Zion knows, and why he talks to Oeshe in the first place, and why all of this is happening.

She doesn’t have an answer for that last thing, but she’s beginning to suspect an answer for the first two.

“You’re not alive either, are you?” she asks, and feels impossibly stupid even when the words finally come out.

His lips purse together, almost in thought. “If there’s nothing about you that’s a person … were you ever really alive?”

That … that could mean a hundred different things. So many of which Dimara isn’t even prepared to look at and try and figure out. Zion seems kind, and generous, and friendly, but now she doesn’t know what to think.

There’s a loud crash from across the room, and both of their heads whip around. It’s the exact direction he sent the girl off in, and he sighs.

“Early, c’mon!” he yells, and half the people around him either look irritated or are getting up to leave. Dimara can’t say she really blames them; it’s the first time he’s ever raised his voice above the faintest murmur. Even then she sees no reason to be scared of it. There’s no malice behind it, no reason to fear anything he could do.

She only fears what he is. What they all are.

She stares long after he’s gone, until Oeshe grabs her so hard by the shoulders that she nearly falls out of the chair. She doesn’t even have the energy to fight it, or complain about how long it’s been since she left in the first place.

“What’s up?” Oeshe asks, and then looks over the table. “I will not be encouraging you to bring books about demonology back to the apartment.”

Because Dimara was totally planning on doing that.

—

—

—August 22nd, 2018.

If coffee is her thing with Kali, then the library becomes her own.

Well, her and Oeshe. But Oeshe winds up ditching her three quarters of the time anyway.

The next morning Dimara plans on leaving in her own car to get there before she’s even properly awake, but Oeshe comes wandering out into the living room and doesn’t give her much choice in the matter. Zion’s there again, able to pick out the books she had yesterday in a matter of minutes, and so is the girl he called Early, who looks like she’s doing nothing but attempting to make his job more difficult.

It’s hard to focus on the real task at hand when she’s now worrying about the people she’s looking at, instead.

There’s no telling what they are. Early could be like Blair, or she could be like Rooke. She could be like neither of them. She can’t even begin to hazard a guess as to whatever the hell Zion is, and she’s not even sure she wants to. Worst of all is that Oeshe won’t tell her anything either, not even a hint, and she certainly won’t tell her what she is, either.

She spends the next three days in the library, almost all hours of the day. When she’s not there she’s with Kali. Eating dinner with Kali or going for a walk with Kali or just sitting on the couch and talking with Kali, and she doesn’t miss Oeshe staring at her during any number of these events, eagle-eyed, waiting for her to fuck something up, no doubt.

But Dimara doesn’t feel like she’s about to fuck something up, with her.

That’s the dangerous thing.

Kali just feels right. Safe. God knows that shouldn’t be a word that applies to either one of their vocabularies. She feels so safe that she’s almost forgetting about everything else, forgetting about why she’s going to the library in the first place. Not that she’s really found any concrete information.

She still hasn’t even called Blair back from two nights ago, because if something was really wrong, she feels like he’d be more insistent. Blair calling, sleepless in the middle of the night, isn’t something wrong. And to be honest, she doesn’t feel the need to.

She feels awful for that.

There’s a lot going on out there, with all of them. She’s so fearful every time one of them so much as texts her, thinking something must have gone wrong. And maybe it has. Maybe her lack of responses don’t mean anything, if they’re not telling her in the first place.

That fourth day, trekking to the library, Kali comes with her.

She doesn’t know where Oeshe is. She feels relief, upon waking to discover that the other girl is already gone, but she’ll never be that lucky. She’s almost out the door when Kali wakes up and tells her to hold on, that she’ll come with her, and Dimara nearly throws up.

They decide to walk, the August air warm and sticky, and Dimara doesn’t even mind.

She really is fucked. And still doesn’t have an explanation ready.

It turns out she doesn’t need one. Kali’s ahead of her when they step into the library, because Dimara held the door open for her in the first place, and she’s the one that sees Zion first. Dimara doesn’t expect any signs of recognition, doesn’t expect Kali’s face to light up and for her to wave like she recognizes him, and Dimara’s stomach nearly plunges into the floor.

It just gets worse by the day.

“Hey, Kali,” Zion says. No sign of Early today, which is a small blessing. He smiles like he means it, warm and genuine, and Kali leans over to hug him like she does virtually anyone.

Dimara still feels sick, watching them interacting.

“I’m gonna head back down and get something to drink,” Kali says. “You guys want anything?”

They both shake their heads, and Dimara holds her breath until Kali walks off, firmly out of sight. Zion is still putting books away like the interaction never even happened.

“You know her?” Dimara asks.

“Uh, yes?”

“You know that she’s a hunter.”

“I know that she’s a _person_ ,” Zion counters. “And I also know that she’s never given me any reason to believe that she’s going to hurt me.”

“Because she doesn’t know.”

“You don’t know either. Are you planning on hurting me?”

Fair enough. But all the things Dimara watched her grandmother kill were malicious, blood-thirsty, had already killed people by the time they caught up. Hardly human at all, really.

“Demons work together,” Zion says. “Like pack animals. And they need a leader.”

“What?”

“I started reading where you left off. They always have a leader, someone they answer to. Without it they’re just chaos. With a leader at least they’re organized. Does that help you at all?”

That means, most likely, that the demon that killed Nadir was only listening to someone else. That the ones that probably killed the entire Council worked together to do it, had a plan in mind from the very beginning. It helps, certainly, but it doesn’t give her any direction. And in the long run it only makes her more fearful, of what exactly is conspiring against them and the entire city.

Dimara’s still standing there thinking that over when Kali gets back, three drinks in one tray. Zion takes his with only a sigh, like he was expecting that from the get-go, and Dimara stares until Kali smiles cheekily at her, offering out the drink.

“You’re ridiculous,” she says, which only makes Kali smiles wider when Dimara takes the drink from her.

This is who Kali _is_. She takes walks with whoever will go with her and buys people coffee whenever she has even the slightest inclination to do so, and she smiles at everyone and hugs everyone and _God, why is this happening?_

“So, why are we here?” Kali asks, and Dimara goes still.

There’s a lot of things Dimara should have been doing, in the time that Kali was gone. Thinking up an explanation for why she’s here probably should have been number one.

“Looking up the laws of inheritance and legal estate,” Zion says smoothly, after a very long moment of silence.

“Oh,” Kali says quietly. “Why is that?”

Yeah, why is that? Dimara looks up at him and doesn’t feel terrified, really, but just nervous. She never told him anything. Never gave up a single shred of information to Oeshe beyond what she told her that first night in her room.

“Dimara’s just been dealing with a lot of that recently,” he answers. “Lots of facts to research. You wouldn’t believe how tedious it can get looking it up.”

Kali still looks slightly troubled, and Dimara feels it but can’t let it show. She definitely can’t say she blames her. She hasn’t told her anything.

To be perfectly clear, she hadn’t told Zion anything, either.

“And here I thought this was a date,” Kali says, frown looking like it’s about to go slightly deeper, and Dimara nearly chokes on her coffee. Zion to his credit keeps his face completely blank, looking over his shoulder away from them.

“Gotta go help someone. See you guys later.”

There’s no one even in that direction, not a single person, and Dimara might have to carefully re-think that option of hurting him, if she does see him later. This isn’t funny. It’s not fair, either.

“You’re the worst!” she shouts after him, and he shushes her. Kali giggles.

“A date?” she continues, and Kali actually has the audacity to look a little shy, when Dimara didn’t think she could ever be.

“It was a joke, but—”

“But what?”

“My family’s having dinner later this week, if you want to come. I was going to ask you anyway.”

Dimara feels two emotions, right then, but three sections to her brain. One that’s telling her to run right now, as fast and as far as she can away. One that knows she’s already decided, because this might be the best chance she ever gets to know everything she can about Kali’s family.

And the last one, the most important, that knows that’s not the only reason she’s going.

—

—

—August 27th, 2018.

They are in an extremely rich neighbourhood, just past six in the evening.

Dimara does not feel like she belongs in a rich neighbourhood.

It’s not just the fact that she doesn’t currently having a meeting the parents and entire family appropriate outfit in her possession. It’s the fact that her heart’s been hammering in her chest since she sat down, since Kali started the engine. She’s swell at hiding it; that, or Kali’s nice enough not to point it out.

The community is gated, for heaven’s sake. The guy in the little booth recognizes her, gives Dimara a once over like he knows she doesn’t belong. All of the houses are nearly a block apart, sprawling across vast acres of land, everything far greener than it should be. Artificial. Fake.

Dimara can do fake. She’s doing it right now.

Kali pulls the car into a long drive, already half filled with cars. Any normal house and they’d be parking on the street, the whole lot of them. No one else has this much room.

She almost feels like she’s made a deal with the devil, if the devil was a girl two inches shorter than she is, the same one who leaps out of the car and grabs Dimara’s arm, looping them together to drag her up to the front door.

It’s a miracle she doesn’t throw up on their very well-manicured lawn.

She didn’t even tell anyone she’s doing this. These people are going to kill her and bury her body in their abnormally green backyard and no one’s ever going to know a fucking thing. That’s about what she deserves, for fostering this level of stupidity and letting it grow.

The noise is audible from the front porch; the level that it hits them when Kali opens the front door is deafening.

“How many people are here?” she hisses. When Kali said dinner with the family, she pictured her parents. Sisters. Grandparents, _maybe_. Not this.

“Twenty?” Kali tries. “Thirty? I’m not sure.”

“You didn’t tell me there were going to be thirty people here.”

“It’s fine!” Kali insists. “They’ll all love you, don’t worry. Oh, Isolde! Isolde, come here!”

Dimara can’t even tell who Kali’s yelling at, exactly, once she’s pulled directly into the throng of people standing in the hall. The ceilings are so tall she has to crane her neck up to see them, the chandelier shaking with the volume of the people, scattering little white lights all over their faces. Everyone looks like they just got off the plane from the goddamn royal wedding, and Dimara’s still very much aware of the fact that Kali caught her sleeping in her car.

The girl that eventually shoves her way through the crowd is the most similar looking to Kali out of all of them, her smile blinding.

“Is this her?” Isolde says, and Dimara blinks in surprise. “Is it?”

Kali rolls her eyes. “Yes, this is her. Dimara, this is my sister Isolde.”

More terrifying than the fact that Oeshe knew about her, prematurely, is that apparently Kali’s family knows as well. Or at least her sisters do, but it could be so much more than that. Dimara stares stupidly at her, trying to come up with an intelligent response, and gets a warm hug in response to save her from the awkwardness. It’s a miracle she manages to hug Isolde back, stiff as she is.

“Where’s Az?”

“Helping Mom with something in the kitchen, I think. Dad abandoned her to talk with Uncle Calvin in the backyard. God only knows about what. Probably something stupid like cigars.”

Something stupidly expensive, is what Dimara wants to say, but keeps her mouth shut. It’s a good thing Isolde starts leading them through the crowd once more, towards the bright overhead lights of the kitchen. The amount of people in here is even more crushing, and she starts to wonder just how accurate Kali’s estimate of thirty really is. It seems much higher than that.

Isolde’s still by her side when Kali leans forward to hug the woman that must be her mother, branching off to squeeze two other people as well. Younger cousins, probably. All of them are ogling her, wondering who this stranger is that’s invaded their promised land. Their kingdom.

Dimara really wants to run back to hers.

But Kali’s mom leans forward as well, to embrace _her_. A hug so warm that it nearly startles her.

“How are you doing, sweetheart?”

“Uh,” she starts, trying to look around. “It’s, uh—”

“A lot?” her mother guesses, laughing. “Believe me, I know, I’m the one that married into it. But you get used to it.”

That implies that Dimara’s going to be around long enough to indeed do that, or at least Kali’s mother is convinced of that on some level. Kali’s still talking to one of her cousins, but looks over her shoulder and smiles at Dimara for no reason at all, and her heart starts back up again.

“I’m gonna go outside and see if I can get my dad to come in!” she shouts, over the crowd. “Just stay here!”

If Dimara had a choice in the matter, she’d take off running after her. The people are packed so tightly around her, though, that in that instance she’s nothing more than a sardine, in a sea full of hundreds of them. Kali disappears back out into the hallway, towards the backyard, and once her mother turns back to whatever’s on the stove Dimara is left staring aimlessly around, trying to pick a face out of the crowd that wouldn’t kill her.

None appear.

One of them, one around her age, picks up a knife out of the butcher’s block and she watches him spin it around his fingers, narrowly missing his own skin each and every time. One of the youngest kids in the kitchen is watching him do it, eyes wide, shrieking every time he switches hands.

This is what they do. Train their young. Expose them to it as early as possible so that when they grow up the weapon in their hands feels like an extension of their arm, a necessity.

She pulls herself out of her own head and he’s looking back at her, still spinning the knife.

“What, you like knives, newcomer?” he asks, grinning. “You good with them too?”

She shakes her head, uncaring for how much of a lie it is. She could kill him, right now. Reach back and grab one herself and before he knew it he’d be dead, but she couldn’t.

And she’s never actually killed anyone before, either. Not anyone human.

“Oh, shut up, Alexander,” Isolde snaps. She reaches in and grabs the knife from his hands with practised ease, her own hand clean when she comes away with it despite how fast it was spinning. “Don’t freak her out.”

“She already looks pretty freaked out to me,” he says simply, and then slides the whole block closer to himself, like he’s about to pick his next one. Dimara’s always been good at being unreadable. The last time she wasn’t was when the tears had risen in her eyes at the funeral, when she realized she had no one and nothing left.

She thought she was doing a good job at that right now, too. But he’s a hunter. They all are. They know when someone’s scared. It’s the same way she knows he’d kill her right where she stands if he knew what she was, and Oeshe, and Zion and Early, and everyone she so desperately cares about, the reason she’s here at all right now.

The crowd is suffocating. Too many people are wearing black, like she really is back at the funeral. A hand lands on her shoulder and she flinches despite it’s gentle touch. When she turns back Kali’s mother is looking her right in the eye, the same mother that supposedly killed Oeshe’s grand-parents, and even though her eyes are soft there’s something searching in there too, no doubt wondering why Dimara’s on edge, why she’s so jumpy—

“Are you alright, sweetheart?”

The pendant at her neck is red. Ruby red, blood red. Red like that stupid fucking seal.

“I have to use the bathroom,” she manages, and promptly flees.

She has no clue where the bathroom is. No idea where to go other than away. Just get the fuck out before she has an honest to god panic attack in the kitchen in front of half of Kali’s family. She shoulders past the last few stragglers at the foot of the stairs and books it up them, to the blissfully empty second floor. She locks herself in the first bathroom she sees, though powder room is probably a more accurate description. Like she even knows what one of those is. She grabs onto the edge of the sink, hands shaking, and every single breath she takes feels more harsh than the last, feels like it’s scorching the inside of her throat.

And she feels like she’s going to cry. Her eyes are burning, a familiar yet horrifying feeling. One that only intensifies when she fumbles her phone out of her purse and the screen is blank as always. No texts, no calls, no way to know that any of them are even alive. It’s been over two weeks. Two weeks of her not figuring this out for them, of her walking into this house like she thinks it’s a solution.

It’s not. It’s not, and she still can’t breathe, and she’s so tempted to call one of them herself, ask them to come and get her before she dies alone in this stupid powder room.

“Dimara?” comes Kali’s voice, outside the door. She hears the door click open, curses herself for not knowing how to use a lock properly, and when Kali puts a hand on her back she jolts, but it’s not like there’s anywhere to go.

“Hey,” Kali says, voice softening. “Hey, hey, I came back with my dad and you were gone – Mom said you ran out, what happened?”

Maybe the reason she sounds so concerned is because Dimara can’t even see her, because of how thoroughly her eyes are blurred over.

“Nothing happened,” she forces out. “Nothing. It’s fine. I’m sorry.”

“Clearly something happened,” Kali murmurs. “It’s alright, I swear. You can tell me.”

That’s what it boils down to, isn’t it? Dimara _can’t_ tell her. Not anything. She just has to keep lying, just has to keep tossing things out into the world that are untrue, to a girl who doesn’t deserve to hear them.

“I’ve never had a lot of family,” she says. At least that’s true. “I only had my mom, and then she died, and I got shipped off here and had my grandma but she died in June, too, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here because I don’t know how to deal with any of this. I’m just alone, and I hate it, and I don’t want to be.”

Maybe it’s not all lies, then. Maybe this is the only truth she knows how to tell, in this moment in time.

“That’s what Zion was talking about,” Kali says, quiet realizing dawning, and she nods blindly. “I’m sorry, jesus, I didn’t know – Dimara, I never would’ve made you come if I had known.”

“You didn’t make me come.”

“Let’s be real, I basically did. And it’s a lot. It’s too much for you right now, I get that. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll just leave,” she offers, longing for an exit. “I’ll call a cab, or something—”

“No, I’ll take you home.”

“You’re not leaving.”

“It won’t take that long. I’ll drive you back to the apartment and come right back, dinner won’t be for a bit anyway.”

“But—”

“Dimara.”

That moment, her name coming out of Kali’s mouth in such a way, is the first time Dimara’s ever felt scared of her. Not why you’d think, though. Because she so readily shuts up, accepting defeat when she knows if it was anyone else she’d probably shove them out of the way to get back downstairs.

She looks up, blinking some of the tears, and Kali reaches forward to wipe some of them off of her face, managing a small smile. “Let’s go. C’mon.”

Kali doesn’t take her back out the front door. They head a different direction, one that’s quieter. Devoid of any people. Thankfully no one has to see her watering eyes, her red face, or hear her still uneven breaths and ask why she’s still standing.

It takes all the way to the driveway, when Kali opens the passenger side door, for Dimara to even realize that Kali’s had her hand the entire time. She waits until Dimara’s all the way sitting to even let go.

“I’m just gonna go tell my mom, alright? I’ll be right back.”

“Tell her I’m sorry,” she says weakly, and Kali nods, gently closing the door. Dimara already doesn’t want her to leave, doesn’t want to watch her walk away, because she wasn’t quite lying. She doesn’t want to be alone anymore. She wants them back. She wants a lot of things.

She takes a deep, shaky breath, and wraps her arms around herself. She stops shaking so much, plants her feet firmly on the mat and makes herself take another full breath, trying to reign herself back in. This isn’t her. Not even close. This is what she’s been reduced to, through all of this.

The door opens again, not two minutes later, and Kali comes striding back down the driveway, walking quicker than normal. Someone holds the door open from the inside – Alexander. It’s hard to miss him. He’s taller than most of the family, leaner, and even lit up from behind she knows it’s him, knife or not. She doesn’t have any concrete evidence that he’s watching her and not Kali, but she feels all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, her hands tightening along her sides at the feeling.

Kali reaches the car.

Alexander grins, white against the red sky, and closes the door.

—

—

—August 28th, 2018.

It’s long past midnight, before Kali comes back.

The apartment is so dark that it almost reminds her of the house, but almost isn’t good enough. She nearly longs for Oeshe’s loud, rambunctious presence, because wherever she is it’s certainly not here, and it’s too quiet without her. Kali waits several long minutes to leave, concerned the whole time, but Dimara eventually manages to shoo her back out the door, back into the waiting arms of her family.

To a place, really, that Dimara should have stayed. There was so much potential there. A wealth of information waiting to be found. She could have figured this out. Started properly protecting everyone.

Instead she freaked out. Nearly had an anxiety attack in a not-quite stranger’s house and had to be driven back to the apartment not fifteen minutes after arriving.

It’s a failure. A complete and utter failure.

Or maybe that’s just her.

When the door finally opens, nearly silent, Dimara does her best impression of someone who’s been asleep for a long while. She _has_ been curled up on the couch for a long while, as small as she can get, staring blankly at the opposite wall. Kali moves quietly through the apartment. Opens and closes the fridge. Dimara is prepared for Kali’s approaching footsteps, but startles at the hand on her shoulder, too much like before.

“You’re bad at faking it,” Kali murmurs, when she opens her eyes. “Feeling better?”

She nods, half-blind in the dark, but that doesn’t stop her from missing Kali’s smile.

“My mom made you a plate. It’s in the fridge whenever you want it.”

“She didn’t have to do that.”

“No, but she felt bad.”

“What did you tell her?”

Kali shrugs. “Just that you weren’t feeling well. Nothing else. They believed it.”

Dimara doesn’t think that’s entirely the truth. Not everyone did, and she knows it. It’s better, for the time being, if Kali doesn’t. She still has things to figure out.

“I really am sorry,” Kali whispers. “Not just about what happened. But everything before we met, too. I’ve never really had to go through that. Losing anyone, I mean. It must be hard.”

“It is,” she responds. Kali’s got dozens of people up in line to lose and hasn’t lost a hold on any single one of them. That’s what hunters do. They’re strong. They survive. Maybe that’s why they so frequently prevail over every other creature that still dares to openly roam the streets.

Kali still has a soft hand on her shoulder, thumb stroking back and forth. Her outline is becoming a little more clear, the edge of her now faded smile.

“I’m glad you’re not alone anymore,” Kali says. “I really am.”

“That’s the thing, though,” she admits. “Sometimes it still feels like I am.”

It was a feeling that had faded, so quickly and so suddenly that she almost hadn’t recognized it. Having everyone else was good for her. Sure, she had eight other people to babysit, eight other people to chase around twenty-four hours a day, but it kept her sane. If she hadn’t gone up to the house she’d probably still be sitting alone in the apartment, curled up on a different couch, wondering what the hell she was supposed to do now.

She wonders what she would be like right now, if Kali hadn’t brought her back here. If she would still be sleeping back in her car, outside that coffee shop, or if she would have given up by now.

“I don’t want you to feel like that. You’re not alone,” Kali assures her. “You’re not. I’m here. Oeshe’s here. Well, sometimes. Zion likes you. Early is Early, but that’s not a bad thing.”

If only Kali knew. Really knew.

She wants to tell her.

She can’t, though, and so no other words find their way to the surface in that absence. She worries her lip between her teeth, her throat closing back up. It’s a miracle no tears flood her eyes once again, although it certainly feels like she’s headed that way.

“Hey,” Kali says quietly, sensing it as well. “You’re not alone.”

The worst part is, Dimara sees it coming, two seconds before Kali kisses her.

She sees it coming. Sees the pause and then the lean in and does absolutely _nothing_ to stop it. Her brain does nothing but shut off, a second before there are lips pressed against her own, so gentle that she’s almost convinced she’s hallucinating, or that she really fell asleep before Kali got home.

But her hand it still there, warm and reassuring against her shoulder, creeping up the side of her neck, and Dimara knows that even if she was properly surprised she wouldn’t have moved away.

Like she told Celia. She was fucked from the beginning.

Kali pulls back, not long after, but doesn’t go very far. She stays crouched in front of her, thumb still inching up to press along her jaw. Dimara, if she were smart, would just take off running. Or scream. Her heart is beating so strong in her chest that it almost hurts and Kali’s lips twitch back up, just for a second.

Dimara doesn’t do anything.

“Alright,” Kali murmurs. “Let’s go, you’re sleeping in my bed.”

Dimara does something. She gets up, and doesn’t even grab her phone, and she follows Kali down the hall, all the way to her room.

And she also hates herself, the entire time.

—

—

—August 30th, 2018.

“You are so fucking stupid,” Oeshe says flatly, in the middle of her eating breakfast.

“Thanks?”

Dimara’s hardly seen her, the past few days. Just in passing, mostly. Kali left for work early this morning, just as the sun rose, and Oeshe hadn’t even been here last night either, when they had both gone to bed.

But she bad been here this morning, sitting in perfect position to watch Dimara come stumbling out of Kali’s room, just before noon. She hadn’t even noticed Oeshe there, watching her, until she had made it all the way out of the bathroom and halfway to the kitchen.

“I just— holy shit, you’re so _stupid_.”

“You don’t think I’m aware of that?” she fires back, and very angrily rips a piece of her crust off, scattering crumbs everywhere. “I know I’m not the pinnacle of great decision making, I don’t need you telling me that as well.”

“You told _me_ they were threatening you, remember?” Oeshe reminds her. “And now you’re a thing?”

“Oh, shut up.”

They’re a thing. That’s hard to ignore. What isn’t true, maybe, is the former. She still doesn’t know it was Kali’s family, that sent that note. A necklace can mean a lot of things, she’s come to learn, but it doesn’t always have to. There’s no reason to really connect the two, other than her own paranoia.

But she still needs to find out.

“What time does she get off work today?” Dimara asks.

“Three, I think?” Oeshe guesses. “Around then. Why?”

It’s noon now. That’s three hours, at least. Definitely enough time for an afternoon at the library, but nothing there is going to tell her which family is threatening her and her friends, and that’s at the forefront of her mind. Not demons, not who’s leading them. Humans, apparently, are proving a great risk to them than anything else right now.

Or at least they are to Dimara.

“Are you doing anything right now?”

“Sitting here, wondering how stupid you are.”

“Besides that.”

“No?”

“Good. Then you’re coming with me somewhere.”

Oeshe sighs. “Why do I have a feeling this is not a good idea?”

“Because it’s me.”

“ _Touché. I’ll be waiting outside.”_

Dimara blinks, and when she finishes chewing through her second last bite of toast Oeshe is already gone, the door slamming shut behind her.

She’s never gotten ready so fast in her life.

—

—

—

So that’s how the two of them wind up in Oeshe’s beater of a car, in one of the richest neighbourhoods in existence.

They definitely don’t stick out, or anything.

There’s no way the house will be empty. Even if by chance Kali’s parents, grand-parents, and both of her sisters are gone, there will be at least a few of them. You don’t have a house that big for no reason. They probably have guards, for heaven’s sake, and a few maids to clean the place while they’re all out for the day.

They park on the next street over and creep through the patch of trees at the back of the property, looking for any sign of movement.

“If I die today I’m going to be so pissed,” Oeshe says flatly.

“You’re not going to die.”

“I’m sure.”

Words aside, Oeshe’s not putting up much of a fight about this. She doesn’t even have to tug her out of cover, and together the two of them ascend the hill that leads to the back patio alongside the pool, pausing at the door. It’s almost completely dark inside.

“So, what are we looking for?”

“An office, maybe. A study or something like that. Wherever someone would’ve sat down and written a note and then sealed it.”

Oeshe sighs but pulls open the door several inches without any warning, and Dimara nearly runs back down the hill to hide. It doesn’t even make a noise, doesn’t look like it’s even been locked in the past year, and Oeshe creeps into the darkness of the sitting room. Unless Dimara plans on letting her go in alone, for a reason that’s not even hers, she better hurry up.

She takes a deep breath and slips in after her, sliding the door shut.

Oeshe’s already heading for the stairs, and while splitting up would cover up more ground, Dimara’s already learned just how terrible splitting up really is. Oeshe doesn’t even make it to the second floor before Dimara’s on her, grabbing at her arm. There’s a voice coming from down the hall, floating closer and closer, and she yanks her into the closest doorway. That stupid powder room that she had nearly had a breakdown in. The two of them slide behind the door, into the shadows, and a few seconds later an older woman walks by, phone pressed between her shoulder and ear, before she heads down the stairs.

 _We’re going to fucking die_ , Oeshe mouths, and she shakes her head.

They both wait there for several long minutes, but the woman never returns. That just means that it’s even more of a possibility that someone’s up here, waiting to catch them.

Oeshe darts out again with all the caution of a bull down the hall and into the next doorway, edging herself back. Still peering around, though. There are several doorways, halls leading in every direction, but after a moment she gestures frantically, waving her hand to follow, and picks one of them. Dimara hurries after her, and the second she’s safely in the room next to her Oeshe shuts the door halfway, hiding them from view.

It’s as close to a study as they’ll probably get. Bookshelves on every wall, a wide oak desk nearly in the middle of the room. The chair is well-worn, half spun to the right like whoever last sat in it was trying to get a good look out the balcony on the far wall, towards the stormy gray sky and whatever lies beyond it.

“Watch the door,” Oeshe hisses, and crouches behind the desk. A second later she hears the sound of a drawer opening, and winces at the harsh scrape.

The hallway is so long, blissfully empty. The house is massive and imposing even tucked into one end of it, like a castle. A castle full of very dangerous, blood-thirsty people. To any outside it would look normal, all the weapons hidden away, all the danger unseen. It does look like that. Like a rich family, caring for all generations within its walls, keeping them safe from harm.

Usually, anyway.

“It’s blue.”

“What?” she asks, and turns around. Oeshe’s holding something up, something wooden tipped with gold at the end, inspecting it in the light.

“It’s not fucking red, see? Come here. There’s a little bit of wax leftover on it – it’s blue.”

It’s the seal itself that Oeshe’s holding, the three pronged triskelion imprinted in gold at the end. Just at the edges there are the faintest bits of color left, traces of blue among everything else, and Dimara reaches up. One of them flakes away under her nail, the blue even brighter there, and she stares at it.

“It wasn’t them,” Oeshe says, and Dimara almost starts crying.

It wasn’t them. It wasn’t them, wasn’t Kali. While there’s still an undeniable amount of risk even being here, in letting herself get so close to Kali, the sudden amount of relief she feels knowing that it wasn’t any of them almost makes her want to sit down right here on the floor, staring at the speck of blue until it finally sinks in.

Oeshe mutters something, something that sounds suspiciously like _oh shit_ , two seconds before she rips the seal out of Dimara’s hand and slings it across the room.

Dimara turns around in time to see it bounce off the center of Alexander’s chest, landing with a clatter on the floor at his feet.

 _Oh shit_ isn’t strong enough.

He follows it with his eyes until it rolls to a stop against one of the bookcases, and then looks up at the two of them. “Really?”

He slams the door shut.

Dimara actually will feel pretty terrible, if she gets Oeshe killed today.

“Let me guess,” he says slowly, and then points a finger at her. “Half-breed of some sort. That’s why you act normal but not quite normal enough. And you—”

“Are going to murder you if you even take a step in this direction,” Oeshe finishes, and Dimara actually believes her. That’s not good. She doesn’t even have a weapon, but she could probably go toe to toe with him, provided he’s unarmed as well. But Oeshe sounds a hell of a lot more convinced about their victory than she would.

That doesn’t stop Alexander from taking a step forward, right then. “Go ahead. I wanna know.”

Dimara _feels_ the visible change in the air, like the storm outside has finally started. There are goosebumps rising all the way down her arms, like a sudden chill struck the room with no explainable reason for it.

Or maybe there is one. Except she really doesn’t want to look away, towards Oeshe, to get one.

Alexander’s still moving, until his frame is silhouetted in the light coming in from the balcony, getting darker and darker by the second.

“Listen,” she starts, keeping her voice low. “We’ll—”

“Why are you under the impression that you get to make any deals?” he asks. “How about this? Listen, and I’ll kill you in under thirty seconds. Or would you rather I call Kali?”

Nope. She would definitely prefer he did not do that, and it must be pretty obvious. She’s getting more worried. Oeshe’s getting angrier. No surprise there, to either of those things.

“You’re deep into things,” he continues. “I can tell. Deep enough that you thought going after my cousin was a good idea. Kali’s good, kind-hearted. Too weak to stomach any of this. Which is why I’d prefer not to have to gut you both and leave you hanging from the community gate.”

Like he could, she wants to say. He’s not that big, and she’ll take Blair’s advice on this one and make the poor fucker catch her first. No matter what she has to do to get away, he’s not catching either of them. That’s not what happens today.

She just doesn’t know what will, not until Oeshe puts a hand on her.

The first thing she feels is the electricity, sharp and numbing, and she nearly yelps in surprise. Oeshe shoves her – that’s not the most surprising part. It feels like she just got shocked, like someone just turned an electric paddle on her still-breathing body. She goes flying to the ground, tumbling nearly head over heels, and even Alexander jumps in surprise, unaware of what’s going on.

Which is exactly what Oeshe wanted, she realizes. Before he even moves again to grab a weapon, if he has one at all, Oeshe slams him so hard into the French doors that the one against his back nearly shatters on impact.

He’s still bigger than them, still probably quite capable, but she doesn’t think that really matters, when you’re getting electrocuted.

At first, she doesn’t even realize. Not until she looks up. His whole body is jerking, locked tight, all the veins in his neck jumping out, and Oeshe’s just not letting go of him. It almost looks like her fingers are blue, tinged with the brightness of sparks that disappear the second they touch his skin. He’s choking, spit flying everywhere, every single part of his body frantically wriggling as he struggles against her.

“You’re going to kill him,” Dimara gets out. If someone doesn’t hear them first. “You’re going to— fuck, stop.”

She finally picks herself up off the floor and goes to grab at her, only to pull back when the electricity pulses through her own hand again. It’s taking everything in her not to just take off, let her implicate herself in this.

Oeshe finally let’s go, though, and Alexander crumples to the ground at her feet. Not quite dead, thankfully, but not far from it. Everyone’s aware of it.

“You’re going to listen to _me_ ,” Oeshe insists. “Either we kill you, or you keep quiet. Your choice.”

Dimara’s not sure where this _we_ is coming from, because it wasn’t her that just nearly electrocuted him to death with her bare hands. Alexander looks up at her, still trembling viciously, mouth almost cracked up in a smile.

“Haven’t fucked with a kitsune in a while,” he wheezes. “Forgot what assholes you all are.”

Well, that’s not agreement. It’s something alright, and Dimara tries not to let that word rotate over too many times in her brain less it start to hurt. Alexander doesn’t look like he’s about to give in. He looks like he’s going to sit here until one of his family members walks in, ready to spill all of their secrets.

“Three seconds,” Oeshe decides.

Alexander hauls himself to his feet, still shaking, holding onto the door handle for support. It dips down under the weight of his hand, the door blowing open wildly in the breeze. He nearly staggers out, struggling to hold onto it.

It’s her he looks directly at when he lets go of it, a true smile on his face. “Have fun talking your way out of this one.”

Oeshe lunges forward. Her arm locks around his wrist, almost. Brushes against his bare skin, as his body jerks once more. Dimara expects him to collapse under the pain again, expects him to stop what’s already happening.

He gets a leg over the balcony, instead, and drops off the edge of it.

—

—

—September 2rd, 2018.

Kali attends the funeral of one Alexander Zidane-Clark, three days later.

—

—

—September 3rd, 2018.

Dimara’s hardly slept in three days.

Kali, thankfully, has finally dropped off into something that isn’t quite a deep sleep, but at least she’s not morphing into an insomniac, either.

It’s possibly the lack of sleep, that’s making all the days blend into one. She remembers Oeshe yanking her out of the house, the faintest hum of electricity still travelling between their veins. She remembers being out on the patio and looking to the right and seeing his body twisted on the pavement, but not getting back in the car. Not the rain starting up, so strongly that they could hardly see out the front windshield.

She remembers Kali calling her in perfect detail, her hysterical voice when she never returned to the apartment after her shift.

She had gone to get her, nearing ten at night. Oeshe had refused to come. Dimara felt sick even driving through the community gates, nearly turned around when she saw the house. There weren’t as many cop cars around as she had thought.

Because he technically, by all faults, killed himself. Right.

Kali had stopped sobbing, by the time she had sat down next to her in the car. She was just terribly quiet, eyes completely blank, clutching an oversized sweater around her shoulders like she was a child, until Dimara couldn’t handle it anymore, pulling over on the side of the road to hug her. Oeshe had been gone when they finally got back to the apartment, and if Kali had noticed she hadn’t had the energy to ask why.

These past few days have been revolving around keeping this girl together, this girl she already foolishly cares so much about. If Kali’s not crying she’s silent, and neither things are familiar when it comes to her. All Dimara can do is sit next to her, make her food, drive her back and forth to the house because she doesn’t trust her on her own.

And she still slips into bed with her every night, and listens to Kali crying herself to sleep with both arms around her, trying not to let the guilt crawl back up her throat and strangle her.

The morning after the funeral Dimara is up at the crack of dawn, if she even slept more than an hour in the first place. Kali’s still asleep – small miracles, here, and she sits there for nearly a half hour still curled around her, trying to edge herself further and further away without waking her.

The funeral program is flat on the counter when she finally struggles her way out of bed, the unrelenting downpour outside still going strong.

She resists the temptation to flip it over, and starts the coffee maker.

It’s the date that’s sticking with her. 2001-2018. He just looked a lot older than he really was.

She was present when someone threatened the life of a seventeen year old _boy_ , who knew he was either going to let Oeshe kill him or take matters into his own hands. A boy who threw himself over the edge of a balcony and broke his neck when he hit the back patio, no hesitation, like he knew what he was doing. She can still see him, twisted awkwardly, too far from the door and too close at the same time, the balcony door above him still wide open.

It was the perfect getaway, really. Oeshe had put the seal back in the drawer and they left. There was nothing tying them to it.

Not unless someone started believing otherwise, which she’s sure was Alexander’s intention.

He was seventeen. Not even out of high school.

She turns the coffee maker off before she can think better of it, right when Oeshe returns. From where, Dimara never knows. The library definitely isn’t open yet. She breezes right past her and nearly down the hall before Dimara turns, calling after her. She’s surprised, honestly, that Oeshe even stops.

“Can you stick around for a bit and watch her?”

Kali’s not an infant. She can handle herself. Alexander calling her weak doesn’t make it true. And it shouldn’t make her feel better, leaving her here with Oeshe, a creature who already threatened the life of one of her family members this past week.

Oeshe stares at her. “Sure.”

No questions asked. They haven’t talked about it at all. Not a single word. It’s like if they refuse to talk about it everything will go away. They won’t be responsible for this. They won’t be liars.

Dimara nods silently, in thanks, and Oeshe disappears to her room. Dimara grabs her duffle bag from the floor, already re-packed. Just in case, she thinks. She might have to run any day now. She changes into the first outfit she manages to put together, pockets her phone and grabs her purse. She still hesitates, looking into Kali’s room, thankful that she’s managing to sleep.

And even more thankful that she has yet to figure it out.

—

—

—

“Not gonna lie, I didn’t think you were coming back,” Zion says, across the table.

Dimara wasn’t sure either, to be honest. Zion knows. If Zion knows, Early knows, wherever she may be. It’s kind of hard not to. The funeral procession was ten blocks long. Went right past the apartment building. She had sat by the window and watched it all go by.

“Did Oeshe kill him, or did you?” he asks, and she goes stiff. He was courteous enough to go get a few books for her, but not the usual amount. After that he doesn’t usually linger.

Today he is.

“Neither,” she answers.

“I didn’t peg you as a murderer.”

“That’s because I’m not.”

Is it murder, if they deserve it? She’s killed _things_. Certainly not any wholly sane people, just for the fun of it. Creatures that were far past the gone, and nothing else. She’s not one of them.

“You’re in too deep with this,” he murmurs, and she’s reminded of Alexander’s words. “You never should’ve gotten involved with her. There are other ways to figure this out.”

“Then give me one,” she offers. She’s desperate for one, at this point. The books in front of her don’t have enough answers. She’s no closer to figuring out who killed the entire Council than she was a month before. Everyone else she cares about is spread out a hundred miles thin, by this point.

“I know that you’re trying to protect people,” he says. “I get that. God knows I try with Early, and I’m stupid for it, but I try. But you can’t handle this on your own. There’s a reason you ask me so many questions, why you stick around Oeshe. We do better together, no matter what we are.”

“We separated for a reason.”

“And it’s been how long? Maybe it’s not working.”

There’s no _maybe t_ o it. It’s not. But she can’t just up and call them all, get the band back together. Clearly, they’re doing well enough on their own.

Or maybe, just maybe, they’re in the same boat she is.

“I can’t let Kali near them.”

“Then make your choice. You knew it was coming eventually.”

Just because she knew it doesn’t mean she wanted it to happen. She has this new thing now, this fragile, terribly beautiful thing that would turn into something better, if she wasn’t who she was. If Kali wasn’t the type of person to kill her for existing.

“Take the books,” Zion offers. “No one will notice.”

She nods, and he gets up. “Thanks.”

Zion shoves the last of the books closer, an invitation. “No worries. And tell Kali I’m sorry.”

“I will.” If she says it, hopefully it’ll feel like she’s saying sorry as well.

Hopefully, anyway.

—

—

—September 6th, 2018.

The thing is, she can’t just up and leave.

She can’t, and she won’t. Kali doesn’t deserve that, in the midst of everything else. She had got back from the library that day, bag full of books, two drinks from the stupid coffee place that had started it all in her hands, and Kali had actually smiled. Smiled like she hadn’t in days, even if it was small, and kept it up when Dimara kissed her on the cheek, like they were still stupid teenagers, foolish enough to believe that things like this always worked.

This isn’t a world where things ever work out. At least not in the way you plan.

She texts Celia that night, in bed with Kali’s face pressed into her shoulder, one-handed because she doesn’t have that option right now.

She falls asleep before she gets the answer. An answer to _Do you think we made the right decision, splitting up_?

All she gets in reply is a series of question marks.

Not the most heart-warming thing to get in reply, but at least it’s consistent.

—

—

—

September 12th, 2018.

Things are better.

Kali doesn’t look quite as desolate, anymore, doesn’t look like she’s on the verge of collapse. She’s getting up earlier again. She goes back to work on the tenth, goes out for walks with both her and Oeshe, when she’s around. She spends less time at her own house, Dimara suspects, because of what happened there. It’s easier to get away from it.

Kali holds her hand all the time, and walks with her, and still talks a lot, although she now suspects it’s because the silence is even worse than before.

That’s the thing that Alexander was so truly wrong about, before. Kali is the furthest thing from weak. Being kind, being gentle – it doesn’t mean you’re breakable. It just means you’re stronger, for getting back up every time.

She tells Kali that, in less words, less poetry, and kisses her in response like it’s the best thing anyone’s ever said to her. Dimara wonders if it really could be.

She’s been raised to be this terrible thing, and isn’t. Dimara tries to look at the girl in front of her, the one walking down the boardwalk along the ocean, as a girl who killed children when her family went up to Augusta, and can’t do it. Her brain won’t cooperate.

Or maybe it just doesn’t want to accept the harshest truth of all: that this ends, at some point.

There’s no other option. It ends, sooner rather than later.

Blair’s on board with meeting back up, or so he says. He actually slept through the night last night and she spent an hour talking to Rooke instead, who seemed pretty convinced of it. Nadir had text her a thumbs up emoji, and Vance had sent her both a thumbs up _and_ a thumbs down, so she’s not entirely sure what the fuck that’s supposed to mean, but it’s good enough.

Celia is still pretending like she doesn’t know how to pick up a call and getting more terrible at it by the day. Probably learned that from Blair.

She checks her phone. The screen’s blank. Kali’s ahead of her, buying ice cream for the two of them, talking to the girl behind the little stand like she knows her. She probably does.

If you ignore the demons and all the murder, it’s not that bad.

For now, anyway.

Kali returns back to her, like always, and Dimara leans down to kiss her before she can get a single word in otherwise, trying to enjoy it, trying to act like they have all the time in the world, before it ends.

—

—

—September 14th, 2018.

It’s nearing two in the morning, when Kali wakes her up.

Dimara can hear something, vaguely, but she’s too deep in sleep to figure out what it is. Kali nudges her once, twice, three times before she properly blinks away.

“Someone’s calling you,” Kali mumbles, and then buries her face in the pillow. Dimara tugs an arm free out from under her and fumbles blindly for the bedside table until her hand slams into the phone, pulling it loose from the charging cord to bring it to her ear.

“What?” she asks, uncaring for who it actually is. She’s finally sleeping, and now this?

“Dimara?” Rooke asks frantically, and she’s never heard someone sound so terrified, with just a single word.

She doesn’t quite sit up, still too groggy, but her eyes open all the way.

“Dimara— shit, something happened, I don’t know what to do, I need you, I need you right now, I think it’s bad—”

“What’s bad?” she asks, fumbling to kick the blankets off.

“I don’t _know_ ,” he says, voice edging into panic. “Someone took them, I just disappeared, I didn’t know what to do, and I don’t know where they are and there were like four of them, at least, and they ran us off the road—”

“Stop,” she instructs. “Stop, slow down. I’m getting up right now, I’ll come and get you.”

“I don’t— God, I don’t know where I am,” he says, and it sounds like he’s crying. “I don’t know where I am.”

“Figure it out.”

She’s already scrambling out of the bed, listening to his frantic heaving breaths on the other end. She pulls the phone back from her ear, checking the time, and someone’s hand lands on her arm.

Not someone.

“What the hell’s going on?” Kali asks, sounding more awake than Dimara feels. She’d be envious, if she wasn’t nearly freaking out. “Where are you going? I’ll come with you—”

“No,” she snaps, too loud and too harsh, and Kali pulls her arm back. “No, just. Stay here.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

This is happening. It’s happening now. Dimara wasn’t ready for it to happen right now.

“You’re staying here,” Dimara repeats. “I have to go.”

She was packed for this. It doesn’t make swinging the bag over her shoulder any easier, nor does she miss the widening of Kali’s eyes when she catches sight of it, clearly confused.

“Are you not coming back?” Kali asks. “Dimara, what the hell—”

“I wasn’t supposed to get close to you,” she bursts out. “I wasn’t. But it happened anyway. How could someone not, right? And I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything, for not being able to explain, and I’m sorry for coming into your life in the first place, but right now I need to go.”

She almost makes it to the door and out into the hall. Almost. She hears Kali getting up, but doesn’t expect Kali to grab the door and get in her way. It’s the first real display of physical strength she’s gotten, and it’s frankly a little frightening.

“Buxton,” Rooke says in her ear. “I think, I think it’s Buxton. I’m near a gas station – there’s a hotel down the road.”

That’s a half hour away, at least. Quicker, in the middle of the night and considering she doesn’t care about speed limits right now. It’d be much quicker if Kali wasn’t standing in her way, looking like she’s about to cry. Dimara hates that look on her face almost more than anything else in the world.

“I’m coming right now,” she tells him. “Stay put.”

She ends the call. Her phone’s hardly charged, and she’ll probably need to call him back. If Kali will ever let her leave.

“Tell me why you’re leaving.”

“Kali—”

“Tell me why,” she repeats.

“I can’t!” she exclaims. They’ve definitely woken Oeshe up by now. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why?”

She’s so sick and tired of the why’s. From everyone. Or maybe she’s just tired of keeping up an act, of thinking safety is finally a real thing that she can have. Family, or love. None of those things ever really feel real to her.

“If I tell you,” she says slowly, and her voice shakes. “If I tell you, you’ll hate me. And I don’t want the last memory I have of you to be you hating me.”

She watches only a few lone tears wobble down Kali’s cheek and wants to brush them off. Wants to hold her and comfort her like she’s been doing these past few weeks, wants to not be doing _this_.

But she doesn’t have a choice. Her last memory is this – watching Kali cry in front of her, knowing that she could get past her but terrified to even touch her. She watches Kali’s eyes fill completely with tears, no sign of the hunter she is in them. She swallows several times before she steps aside.

Dimara has a clear shot at leaving. She doesn’t move.

“I’d never hate you,” Kali whispers.

And that’s where she’s wrong. But they’re both wrong here.

“I’m sorry,” she says again. “If you remember one thing, please remember that.”

It doesn’t feel like an ending. It doesn’t feel like she has any right to close this door, even less ability to walk away. But she closes her eyes and does just that. Steps out into the hallway still clutching onto her phone, still terrified, and thinks all the way to the front door that Kali’s going to stop her.

But she doesn’t.

She steps out of the apartment, not even brave enough to look it over once more.

The door closes.

She swears the last thing she hears is Kali crying.

 

 


	2. How The World Is

**Body #2:** Sits for nearly two hours before it’s found, letting the iciness creep back in, and then gets left again not a minute later.

—

—

—August 11th, 2018.

It takes a grand total of one day for the beginning of the end to be set in motion.

Celia is honestly shocked it didn’t come sooner.

Most of that stems from the fact, she thinks, that Dimara spent a grand total of three days, since the real beginning, actually teaching her how to drive. She doesn’t have an actual license because they won’t find her in any sort of computer system. She doesn’t even have a last name.

It’s probably a good thing the car is in Dimara’s name, anyway.

That doesn’t stop her from finding what must be every single back-road that exists in a hundred mile radius. She won’t draw attention to either of them, not when they’re supposed to be laying low. She doesn’t think her driving like a maniac across the highway will convince anyone of that.

Rory was concerned for the first little while, but now he’s just resigned to the fact, that they’ll be getting anywhere and everywhere no faster than the pace of a crawl, through unmarked country roads, all but lost in the trees.

After all the nonsense of the past few weeks, she doesn’t mind being in solitude. It’s nice to just be quiet, to talk to Rory only when he talks to her first, safe with the thought that someone has to figure this out, at some point. This can’t go on forever.

Until that time comes, they’re in transition. They have no home, no place to be. Nothing really, except each other.

And she’s oddly fine with that.

Transition is something she’s familiar with, and familiarity in such a turbulent time is a good thing.

—

—

—

Rory lived twenty years in the mindset that nothing was wrong with the surface world.

All those stories still stick with him, about the ones who never go back. He always imagined it as this perfect world, where people got along and things were beautiful and that maybe, just maybe, there was a reason to stay on land, even if he didn’t understand it himself.

The problem with being human (mostly) is learning just how wrong you were.

Kelsea probably understands it the best, but she’s somewhere far away right now, hopefully not re-learning that lesson once again. The both of them witnessed that first stage of the massacre down on the beach, the people that nearly killed Tanis, the thing that killed Nadir.

The people who could still be hunting them now.

And he’s learned that there’s nothing really inherently good about the world.

It’s not something he’s comfortable with admitting, not when he knows it would take two seconds to get back in the ocean and disappear for good, if only he had the courage. But he can’t leave everyone, and especially not Celia, and who knows if he’s got anything to go back to, anyway.

Right now, in the silence of the car, it’s easy to forget all those awful, little things. Celia has finally stopped edging closer to the trees to get a rise out of him and now drives in content quiet, calm and breathing easy even if they don’t know exactly where they’re going.

He’s naïve. He knows he is. He’s stupidly optimistic, and clings to it, and he hates the way the world is sometimes but refuses to let that break him.

Or at least he’s trying, anyway.

But certain people can only try so long, before they collapse under the weight of their efforts.

—

—

—

Celia sees the car first.

Rory’s just watching the trees whiz by, temple leaned up against the window. She’s the one that sees the marks from a set of tires all across the road, and little bits of twisted metal scattered everywhere, two seconds before they round the next bend.

There’s a car smashed into the nearest bunch of trees, nearly wrapped around one of the biggest ones. She hits the breaks so hard that her chest aches, and Rory snaps up, suddenly alert, eyes landing on the scene in front of him.

The car finally stops, twenty yards away from the wreckage. The hood is still smoking.

Rory gets out of the car before she even thinks to do it herself.

By the time she moves to follow he’s nearly there, already, scrambling into the grass with a hand on top of the car, trying to get a good look in. He disappears, after that, crouching behind the door, and she edges the car onto the shoulder before jumping out after him.

The second she gets close she knows it’s bad. Rory’s managed to get the front door half-way open, but it shrieks and groans the whole time, and as soon as he’s got enough room to properly see all the blood becomes evident, even in the lack of light.

It’s just one person, pinned between the seat and the wheel, so covered in blood that they’d be lucky if it was a person at all.

“What do we do?” Rory asks, and then looks back to her. “What the fuck do we do?”

Maybe he hasn’t realized. Maybe he just doesn’t want to. But she knows the sight of a dead body when she sees one. Maybe not a ghost, but this is clear to her. Plain as day. The guy’s dead. It looks like he’s been dead a while. They haven’t seen anyone else on the road in nearly a half hour, and that was way back. For all they know, he could’ve been dead for hours.

“What do we do?” he repeats, and she shoves him out of the way, trying to get closer.

“Go back to the car.”

“What?”

“Go back to the car,” she insists. “Just listen to me.”

His eyes are as wide as saucers, freaked out like in a way she’s only seen him two times. Once, in the bathroom right after Kelsea brought him back, and the second time, standing in the ashy ruin of Tanis’ little house, trying to make sense of the bodies all around him.

He pulls himself away from the door after a moment, staring at her in bewilderment, and then listens. She sighs in relief as soon as he’s gone, and then fumbles for the phone in her pocket.

She checks over his shoulder, watching until he’s clambered back into the passenger seat, watching on like a hawk. She reaches a hand in warily, almost nervously, until it comes into contact with the guy’s arm. It’s ice cold, and the blood doesn’t even smudge when she runs her fingers through it.

Getting back to her feet and heading back to the car herself is an easy decision, but she still pulls the number up regardless.

It only rings twice before it picks up on the other end, but she’s already sliding back into the front seat.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“I need to report an accident.”

Rory starts shaking, somewhere in the middle of her getting all the details out to the operator. He’s wringing his hands in his lap, tapping his foot anxiously, watching on. Not a single car goes past them the entire time, and by the time she hangs up the suns come back out, making everything seem much less macabre than it really is.

She starts the car back up, and Rory jumps.

“Where are we going?” he asks. “Aren’t we going to—”

“We’re not sticking around.”

“Why not?”

“We’re supposed to be laying low, staying out of trouble. Not waiting around the scene of a crime to be questioned by the cops once they finally show up.”

“We can’t just leave him here.”

“He’s dead,” she says firmly, and he flinches. “He’s fucking dead, he doesn’t need us here.”

Maybe he did know that, but it doesn’t change the lack of tact that’s in her voice when she says it. He looks away from her, back to the road, sucking in a breath.

“Someone hit him,” he says in a rush. “There’s shit all over the road – someone hit him and just _drove off_.”

“Welcome to the real world,” she says, because harsh or not it’s the truth. She wishes she could maintain the amount of optimism he has, but it’s just not realistic. It’s only going to hurt him more, in the long run, and that’s the last thing she wants.

She pulls the car back onto the road, carefully, and continues down. To wherever they’re going.

Rory looks back, all the way back, until they can no longer see it.

—

—

—

They don’t find a suitable enough place to stay before night falls, but it doesn’t really matter.

Rory doesn’t sleep a wink anyway.

—

—

—August 12th, 2018.

The issue with them, Celia thinks, is that they like each other _too_ much.

Which really wouldn’t be an issue at all, if things had just proceeded as normal.

But the next day when she looks at Rory in the passenger seat, there are shadows under his eyes, almost like the beginnings of a faint bruise. He’s hardly said five words to her all morning, quiet and distant.

Celia doesn’t know how to do quiet and distant, anymore.

It was only that first day that she really felt it at all. By the time he got to the house she was past it, trying to integrate herself in. She couldn’t do that if she stayed quiet.

“What’s up?” she asks him, not taking her eyes off the road. He doesn’t even look at her.

“Nothing.”

“If you’re upset about yesterday—”

“Am I supposed to _not_ be upset about yesterday?”

“You’re acting like, like it was one of _us_ that died, for fuck’s sake. You didn’t even know him.”

Rory swallows, voice still quiet. “It’d be worse if it was one of you.”

She would expect that, of course, but such a visceral reaction for nothing more than a stranger feels almost a little ridiculous. That’s just to her, though. When she thinks about him and how he’s handled everything else, it almost makes sense. After all, she’s the one who was up in the middle of the night just sitting with him in the weeks that Nadir was gone because he didn’t know how to sleep.

But still – it’s a _stranger_.

Was, anyway.

“I know it sucks, but—”

“But that’s the way the world is. I heard you yesterday.”

Celia’s great with asking for space, but not knowing how to give that to other people. There’s really nowhere to go, anyway, unless she plans on throwing herself out of the speeding car right now and hoping for the best. And Rory wouldn’t want her to do that, because he’s Rory.

She resolves herself to shutting up, for the next foreseeable amount of hours. Clearly talking isn’t getting them anywhere. It never really does, with her.

—

—

—August 16th, 2018.

The issue with them, Rory _knows_ , is the lack of understanding.

The one thing they do both know about each other for certain is that it was easier where they both came from. Nothing bad ever happened. They never had any reason to believe anything bad was _going_ to happen.

And then, in the span of the same few weeks, everything bad did happen.

He knows it could get so much worse. He saw that evidence in the car, after all, the blood and the lack of a pulse, the sirens far off in the distance when they had started driving off. And Celia – Celia hadn’t fucking _blinked_ at it, like this was just a thing for her, like he hadn’t gotten dragged off less than two months ago from a place filled with three times the amount of them.

He knows Celia cares. His personal issue is with her acting like she doesn’t.

And no matter what he does she won’t admit it, either.

She doesn’t look at him the way she looks at everyone else. And maybe that’s because he saved her life, but he doesn’t think it boils down to that. Celia doesn’t like being saved, not from anything. He’s the complete opposite. He’d be content to let someone take him away from all of this, prove him wrong. Show him that the world’s not all the terrible things he’s seen, because he hasn’t seen much good come of it.

But no one will. He knows it. Not even Celia, who just keeps driving on and on, like the further they get from the source of the problems, the quicker they’ll solve themselves in their absence.

Celia doesn’t even tell him they’re stopping, when they finally do, but they’ve talked so little the past few days it doesn’t surprise him. It seems like she’s spent more time texting Dimara than talking to him.

He doesn’t get out with her. Doesn’t ask what she’s doing. It’s a hotel – it’s pretty obvious what she’s going to do. Apparently she’s getting sick and tired of driving around in silence, following circles with no end.

She comes back ten minutes later with a key and grabs her stuff out of the back-seat, looking up towards him. He squints at her in the dark light. “You staying in here all night, or?”

It’s the first thing she’s said to him all day.

He gets out of the car.

—

—

—

Rory pretty much resolves himself to sleeping on the floor.

Celia drops all of their stuff in varying places and creates a virtual whirlwind around the entire very small space. He stands awkwardly in the middle of the room while she swirls around him, and then goes to shower.

Still with that silence.

He busies himself with taking the few extra blankets and pillows and arranging them on the floor into something that will hopefully be comfortable enough to sleep in.

He’s tired, and already settling down into his makeshift nest when Celia comes out of the shower. The little balcony doesn’t provide much of a view, save for the sliver of ocean far in the distance, and he looks out it until he hears Celia stop moving behind him.

“Are you seriously considering sleeping on the floor?” she asks.

He turns around. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, staring incredulously. That’s what his option is. There’s a bed, sure, but every other time they’ve stopped there’s been two beds, not one, and right now he thinks there’s such a rift growing that if he forces her to sleep right next to him she’ll probably kill him in his sleep.

She sighs. “Get in the bed, idiot. I’m not listening to you complaining tomorrow because your back’s sore from sleeping on the ground.”

He watches her while she puts a sweater on, fights with the blankets on the right side of the bed to pull the corners free from the end. He lays there for a moment, imagining clearly how hard she’ll hit him if he refuses to drag himself off the floor.

Eventually, no surprise to be found, he gets up, leaving most of the stuff on the floor. Celia has crawled in and is staring up at the ceiling, hands flat over her stomach. He carefully slides in on the other side and has his eyes closed before he’s even properly settled. He’s not that comfortable, and hardly breathing, curled up tight right at the edge.

“Are you pissed at me or something?” Celia asks, and he cracks his eyes open. She’s still staring at the ceiling.

“Why would I be pissed at you?”

“I don’t know.”

He’s upset, and angry, but not with her. She goes to glance at him and looks back up in the same second, when she realizes he’s staring back at her.

“I don’t know,” she repeats. “It just felt like you were.”

“Well, I’m not,” he tells her, and she nods. He closes his eyes and exhales. It still feels like he could add a whole lot more, or that she could ask him something else. He feels her roll over, and when he looks again she’s facing away from him, towards the wall and the sliver of outside that the air conditioning is exposing every time it lifts the curtain.

“If you kick me in your sleep, you’re dead,” she says flatly.

He smiles, but it doesn’t last long.

—

—

—August 18th, 2018.

“You’re not going to hit anything throwing it like that.”

Not that Celia is the pinnacle of throwing knives, or anything. She’s not really the pinnacle of knives, period. Same goes for the driving. But Dimara taught her some things. Enough that she’s confident that she can teach some skills to the world’s clumsiest human being.

He’s not so bad anymore, so unsteady. She just likes to tease him about it.

Rory pitches another knife across the clearing and it bounces off the tree again. There are three more on the ground just like it, failed throws.

They only have the four, but Rory doesn’t move to collect them.

“I think you’re getting better, though,” she tries, hopeful. He’s not. “A few more tries, and—”

“Have you ever considered that I’m not actually trying to hit anything?”

Well, that’s the most angry he’s sounded in over a week. Not angry, necessarily. Just irritated. She thought by making a joke that first night in bed that they’d get over whatever they were going through, but now they’re back to the silence.

And right now, they’re back to this.

“It’s a tree,” she points out. “I’m not asking you to hit a person.”

“Good, because I’m not going to,” he informs her, and then finally goes to pick the knives up. She can see it so clearly, the day that comes when they finally need to fight back, and Rory’s dead body in front of her because he’ll refuse to do it.

He finally scoops all the knives up, and nearly moves back to his previous spot. Instead he makes a beeline for her, and holds out the knives until she carefully takes them out of his hands, before walking off.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“Back to the room. Have fun.”

It’s not far. Just through the trees. Instead of taking a straight path he walks parallel along the clearing for a moment, and she watches him glance through the woods straight towards the ocean, eyes locked on it before the forest grows too thick to properly see through.

She watches him go all the way back, in the twilight, and then turns around without looking and pitches one of the knives forward.

It bounces off the tree and into the grass.

She can’t say she’s surprised.

—

—

—

It’s not nearly dark enough to go to sleep, but she can’t bring herself to do anything else.

When she gets back to the room Rory is out on the balcony, apparently ignoring her. She kicks off her shoes and doesn’t even bother changing, before she crawls into the bed, staring at his back.

She didn’t know how bad it could get, having so many emotions. Especially when they conflict so viciously, like two warring sides in her heart. A devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, except right now she thinks the positions are reversed. Right now, she’s rapidly transforming into the devil and the only angel she’s got is sitting on the balcony avoiding her, avoiding everything.

It takes her a while to fall asleep, but that thought is still there, when she does.

—

—

—

When she opens her eyes, it looks strangely like home.

She thinks people, regular old people down on the ground, would call it the golden hour. A time when everything is washed over in the sun’s rays, magnified and fair and warm and most of all, safe.

It’s not home. This is no heaven, and she’s not delusional enough to believe it. But it looks like it, feels like it, and there’s someone not far away, and she knows those are wings the same way she knows she still doesn’t have hers back, only the scars in their place.

He’s all faded around the edges, blurred out. Even getting closer nothing sharpens.

“Is this a joke?” she shouts. There’s no need to yell, but she doesn’t care. “Bring me back to the place I fell from less than two months ago, and for what?”

“Everyone deserves a break, once in a while.”

Maybe there’s a reason why she got kicked out. Her voice is so loud, so bitter, and his is just calm. Serenity. Peaceful. The same way everything else was, up there.

Up here. It’s starting to look more similar every second.

“You call this a break? More like torture. I’ll get a few minutes here and then I’ll wake up back down there. That’s just worse.”

“I didn’t know it was possible, for one person to hate a place so much,” he says quietly.

“I don’t—”

“Don’t what? Don’t despise it, the way you make it seem?”

She doesn’t hate it, even though it seems like it. She hates everything associated with it. The human emotion and everything she’s been thrust into and the complete and total lack of power that’s in her now. It feels like she’s standing in the middle of the road, about to be the next victim of an unfortunate hit and run.

“I hate not having what I used to have,” she admits. “I hate not being in control of anything and I hate not knowing what’s going to happen and I fucking _despise_ never being able to get away from any of it because someone up here took it away.”

“Why do you speak as if you have no wings?”

“You know damn well why I’m talking like that. You go your whole life with something and then someone else decides you deserve to lose it and suddenly it’s gone.”

“Wings don’t always have to come in a physical form. Sometimes it just means having other things. Sometimes it just means freedom.”

She laughs bitterly. “Real fucking rich coming from someone who’s not stuck on the ground. You have no idea what it’s like, to be stuck here. To feel like you just lost everything. To—"

“To gain things you weren’t aware existed?” he finishes quietly. “To live a life. A _real_ life? To have love and support and something worthwhile to hold onto?”

She goes quiet, whatever accusation next ready to be hurled at suddenly dying in the back of her throat. It doesn’t feel like she has any of that right now. The others are gone. Rory will hardly talk to her. That stings most of all, as unwilling as she is to admit it. The growing distance, the silence. All of it. It’s adding up to an amount that’s threatening to crush her.

“Don’t you get it, child?” he asked, voice soft. “You weren’t thrown out. You _escaped_.”

He’s not close enough to touch, but it feels as if someone’s brought her into the centerfold of a very warm embrace. Something she never properly felt, until she hit the ground. It’s something she’s grown used to, something she’s not entirely sure she could live without at this point.

What’s worse? Falling in the first place, or falling right now?

She doesn’t get the chance to decide, before she wakes.

It happens so slowly, peacefully enough that it feels almost like she’s coming out of a dreamless slumber, sleep undisturbed by nightmares or dreams. If only that was the case.

The blankets are thrown back on the other side of the bed, and Rory’s _still_ sitting on the lone wicker chair out on the balcony, knees drawn up to his chest. It’s not much of a view, with how dark it is. It’s been hours, since she fell asleep. There’s still only one little sliver of ocean, too, hardly visible, far off to the right. Nowhere close enough to touch. He looks as tired as she feels; properly drained, like he needs to be filled back up with enough life to keep him going.

And the worst part is, it started with confusion.

But now that she’s awake, she’s angry.

She’s not even sure at what. This whole bullshit situation. Falling in the first place. Him, maybe.

She gets out of bed and tugs open the sliding door. He jumps, hands falling away from his knees, and looks right at her.

“You want to go back to the ocean, go ahead.”

He blinks at her. “What?”

“I know you want to go back,” she insists. “So just fucking do it. Do it and get it over with instead of the both of us fucking sitting here avoiding it.”

“What are you talking about?” he asks quietly, and now more than ever does she wish that he wasn’t quiet. She wishes he would shove back, that he would scream at her. If that’s what would help, she’d have offered a long time ago.

She doesn’t think it’s really helping her right now, though.

“You’ve wanted to go back since day one. You hate it up here.”

“That doesn’t mean I’d just up and leave you right now—”

“Right now,” she repeats, louder. “Because we both know, we all fucking know, that as soon as this blows over you’re gone, right? That’s how this works.”

“That’s not how this works,” he insists.

“It is,” she says, almost knowingly. “I know you’d go back the same way I’d know that I’d be gone too, if I had a choice. The difference is I don’t have one. You do. I can’t even fault you for it.”

“So that’s what this is about,” he murmurs. “It’s not me. It’s you.”

“It’s me?” she asks. “Seriously?”

If Rory looked vaguely upset before she even got out here, it’s undeniable now. His hands have dropped from his knees, but it looks like he wants to bring them back up as an extra shield, to keep him from harm. From the outside world, but mostly her.

And that’s just the problem, isn’t it? She’ll never admit it, but it’s always her.

“Where did this come from?” he wonders, quietly. She has to strain to even hear him.

“Don’t act like this hasn’t always been a problem.”

“I’m not. I just—”

“Then we don’t need to talk about it.”

“Apparently we fucking do,” he says, voice nearly as loud as hers. “Apparently we do.”

She didn’t think Rory had it in her, to be properly angry. Definitely not at her. She’s seen a lot of things out of him, the past while. Sadness and frustration and a desolate, vast emptiness that she was hoping to God she’d never have to see but did anyway. She just wanted to stop that from happening, but she couldn’t even do that. It’s this world and all of the fucked up things in it and one day it’s going to tear the both of them apart.

“Can you really blame me?” he whispers, and the sudden change in his voice has her gripping at the edge of the door. “You— you said it yourself. You didn’t have anything like a family. You didn’t have anything to be close to. You were just existing. What I left — that _was_ my everything. And every single day I think about the fact that they’re probably dead anyway, so it doesn’t matter. But that doesn’t stop me from thinking it. Doesn’t stop me from wanting to know.”

She thinks about what she said, just minutes ago. About what it felt like, to lose everything.

That was everything to her.

“That’s the problem,” she says. “You really don’t get it.”

“I’m trying—”

“I don’t think you are.”

“I’m trying!” he bursts out, insistent. “I’m trying, but you never fucking tell me anything! How am I supposed to know if you won’t tell me anything?”

He’s two seconds from standing up, feet back on the ground. She can’t imagine him getting up. What will happen if he does. She’s still standing in the doorway, blocking his only way out. The balcony is three stories up in the air.

There’s a huge part of her that wants to be back in that dream, if that’s what it was. Back in the familiarity of it all. Regardless of what she did and didn’t have, at least she knew it was consistent. And least there she had a hold on everything.

Here it’s entirely the opposite – and Rory’s scared, wavering eyes are living proof of it.

She still wants to scream. At him, or the world. Whatever will listen. She wants to punch the wall but doesn’t want to deal with the irritating flare of pain, of having to fix herself. Most of all she wants him to stop looking at her like he’s concerned, like he’s prepared to leap to his feet and hold his arms out if that’s what she wants.

Because that’s not what she wants.

“I wish you had just let me drown,” she says quietly.

He swallows. “Please don’t say that.”

“Why not?” she asks lowly. “You don’t want to hear the truth?”

She’s not sure what option seems more terrible, now that she’s looking at it. The concern that was there before, or the heartbreak that replaces it. Something that seems so visible, when it splits his face in two, when it slowly brings him to his feet.

She almost wishes he would hit her. She would expect to fall again, before that would ever happen.

“Can you move?” His voice shakes a little bit. She chooses not to focus on it.

“It’s the truth,” she maintains, and doesn’t move an inch. “It’s the truth, and you know it is. The same way you want to go back. Being dead would be fucking easier than dealing with this. And that’s what we’d both be if you had just let nature take its course.”

He doesn’t shove past her. He presses as close to the door as he can get to brush past her, further into the room. She only turns when he pulls the door open, yellow light spilling into the darkened room. He truly looks more like an angel than she ever felt.

“You wanna know what the truth is?” he asks, gripping onto the door handle. She can’t tell if he’s crying, at this distance, but it sounds like he is.

She keeps her mouth shut. There’s not much left that she can think to say. Only something that sounds suspiciously like _please don’t go_ and it won’t come out anyway.

“You’re a liar,” he decides. “And that’s the only truth I know right now.”

He steps out into the hallway, and slams the door shut behind him so hard the walls seem to shake. Celia eyes the balcony, still unchanged at three stories up, and wonders if jumping would seem less tempting, if she still had wings to catch her.

—

—

—August 20th, 2018.

He’s gone for hours.

Celia pictures him wandering down the long, straight road all the way to the ocean. Stepping in and letting himself slip under the waves, letting the change take back over.

She sits at the end of the bed all night, legs crossed awkwardly. She never manages to shut the balcony door all the way, and occasionally a seagull will wheel overhead, and she imagines it all over again, imagines him going back where he belongs, never coming back to her.

She has no ownership of him. She doesn’t want any, either.

She wants something a lot different than that. Or at least she thought she did, before all of this.

Sleep never comes back to her. No dreams, no visions. The entire night she feels vaguely sick, and her back aches in a way it hasn’t since the very beginning, the lines on either side of her spine throbbing with every sudden movement.

If Rory’s right, and she really had nothing, then she just possibly gave up one of the only things she ever truly had a shot at having. Lost to the sea, unclaimable once again. She’ll never feel like a liar, saying he belongs there. She can see it in his eyes, same color as the water, and wonders if that’s what they all look like.

It feels like more of a possibility now than it did before.

She hardly moves out of the room the whole day. There’s enough food in here that she doesn’t have to. Only once does she wander out into the hall, mid-afternoon, one eye always waiting for him to appear.

There’s a lot of real truths out there, no matter how unwilling they are to believe them. She knows that she doesn’t deserve him, but that if he doesn’t come back that’s something she will deserve. She’s the one that drove him out. The one that said unforgivable things to the one person that should have never heard them.

She knows that if he had stood up and offered his arms like she so expected that she would have fallen into them, eventually.

She’s really good at this whole falling thing.

The day spills back into the night. By the minute she’s more and more convinced that she’s lost him for good.

That’s her punishment. It only seems fitting.

Just after midnight the door clicks open. It’s been nearly sixteen hours since he walked out on her. Since she practically chased him out. She knows he didn’t bring a key, but the door has never properly locked anyway. She keeps her face resolutely buried in the pillow, blankets up to her neck, and inches as far as she can towards the left edge of the bed before she hears his shuffling footsteps come a little closer.

“Celia.”

This voice is so unlike anything she’s ever heard come out of Rory’s mouth that for one panic-filled moment she thinks that it can’t possibly be him and shoots up so fast her head spins.

It is him. There’s no denying it. The door is still half-open, slowly inching back towards it’s place in the frame.

For a very long moment, the suddenly awful yellow lighting nearly disguises all the blood.

The second it clicks shut is the same second she realizes.

“Rory,” she gets out, already alarmed, and he hits the ground before she’s even managed to get out of the bed. She struggles out of the blankets, feet hitting the ground. Watches him catch himself, barely, one hand underneath himself. The other is pressed feebly over the gash at the base of his neck, longer than her fingers, gushing out blood all over his hand and onto the carpet, now, too much of it and too fast.

It’s a nightmare. It has to be. That, or she’s hallucinating.

Her fingers land over top of his, and in seconds they’re soaked in his blood.

She’s not imagining it.

“Rory,” she says again. He tips awkwardly onto his side, letting his arm go free. His shirt looks nearly black in the light, stained through with blood, and it’s coming out of his mouth too, even more so when he tries to say something else.

“Stop,” she insists. “Fuck, fuck, just stop, let me—”

Let her do what, exactly? She could reach her fingers inside his neck right now, if she could even see where the wound began and ended. There’s so much blood that he could be injured else-where and she wouldn’t even know it. His eyes are hardly open.

“Rory,” she pleads. “Look at me, Jesus Christ, do not close your eyes right now.”

He’s going to bleed out. She can see it already. Consciousness is already proving hard to hold onto. Who knows what happened out there, how far away he was because he left, because he wanted away from her. All she knows is that right now there’s blood gushing out of his neck, droplets of it rolling down her arms, and she doesn’t know who’s in the midst of a more desperate struggle to breathe.

“Celia,” he manages, weak and choked, and more blood bubbles up between his lips.

“Shut up,” she snaps. “Fuck, I don’t— I’m gonna have to take you to the hospital.”

He shakes his head. More blood soaks both of their fingers. She doesn’t even know if there’s a hospital anywhere around here, doesn’t know where to take him even if there was someplace safe.

“Ocean,” he says feebly, the word hardly recognizable, and she freezes. The only thing still moving is her heart, beating so strongly that she fears it leaping out of her chest, and she hopes his. She thinks of what she said, him wanting to go back, letting him return to a place that he so desperately longs for.

“Heal,” he chokes. “When I— I’ll change. Heal.”

She stares at him, and his hand stops trembling violently under hers, energy spent. The spasms are dying off. More than that could be dying off. She doesn’t know if that’s the truth, no matter how much she wishes she did.

But if he’s telling her the truth now…

She shoves both of her arms under him and pulls him up against her, back to his feet. He slumps weakly against her chest, fingers doing nothing more against his neck than acting as a placeholder. There’s no force there stopping any blood-flow. She fumbles backward, blindly, fingers closing slippery around the car keys, already pulling him towards the door. He’s not so much walking as she’s supporting nearly all of his weight.

“You can’t close your eyes right now,” she repeats. “You need to stay awake.”

She’s not sure if it’s even getting through. There’s a smear of blood out in the hallway all over the wall like he stumbled into it, managing to catch himself, before he continued on to try and get back to her. For a second, she feels terror, at even stepping outside, at wondering what happened and why he came back like this, sixteen hours later.

The terror of him bleeding out and dying in her arms is worse than that.

She doesn’t even have the phone. She can’t call Dimara. That would mean going back for it, and she doesn’t think she has those precious seconds right now.

The car’s not far. She can see it.

She just has to get him there.

And pray for a miracle, with his blood all over her hands.

—

—

—

Rory hears one last loud noise, and then everything is stunningly quiet.

He feels something under him. Celia lets go of him. There’s that loud noise. He slumps a little to the right and cool glass lands under his cheek. Window. Maybe the car.

He’s got no way of telling.

“Rory,” Celia says, and he tries to open his eyes. It feels like someone’s glued them shut. His hand slips away from his neck, and two seconds later someone picks it back up, holding it there until they’re convinced of it’s placement.

His brain knows that it has to be Celia. There isn’t anyone else here.

She grabs onto his other hand, squeezing so tight that it hurts. The car starts. He doesn’t like being in a car with her, and how she drives it like she stole it. Like she’s running, fleeing faster than her legs can take her.

“Where—?” he asks, hoping she gets the message.

“The ocean, remember? You told me to take you there.”

Did he? He can’t remember. Everything in his brain has turned to soup, swirled together until there’s not a single thing that’s distinguishable. Some of it must be leaking out, too. All over his neck and slipping down his chest. He can feel it wherever his fingers land, sliding around in it.

“Rory,” she repeats. There’s blood seeping in the cracks of his lips, spilling over down his chin.

“Don’ wanna die,” he mumbles, and this time when her fingers press against his he’s convinced she’s going to tug them right off.

“You’re not fucking dying,” she snaps. “Don’t – don’t say that.”

Why does that sound familiar? Why does that feel like a thought he’s had before, trying to push its way in through the haze? It’s something – something important. He can’t think of what it could possibly be, and why he’s hearing it again now.

“Tell me what happened,” she insists. “Just talk to me. We’re almost there.”

Are they? He turns his head further into the window, eyes cracking open a mere sliver. Everything is rushing by so fast it’s nothing but a blur. He nearly throws up. All grays and green and dark, midnight blue. So much of it, spread out before his eyes.

He tries to talk, to say anything, explanation or not, and the blood in his mouth nearly chokes him.

The car stops so suddenly he nearly goes slamming quite lifelessly into the dashboard. Celia’s arm stops him before he can move an inch. They can’t possibly be there, not unless he fell asleep. Not unless he lost some time—

The door opens from underneath him, and Celia catches him before he can go tumbling to the pavement. His arms slip away, scraping at the gravel, her arms, anything. Something presses back over his neck – her hand, must be. It’s not doing anything. He wants to tell her that, but he can’t.

He’s not entirely sure what dying feels like but reckons it’s probably not very far off from this.

Celia gets his jacket off, somehow. He doesn’t remember the shoes, but she starts pulling him off and two seconds later his feet go skidding through night-cool sand. He’s trying to keep his eyes open, but can’t see anything. It’s so dark, but he can hear it. The waves. The birds. The breeze still warm and humid against his skin, rushing softly past his ears. He reckons she’s still talking. He can hear it, but all the words are garbled and far away, like he’s already underwater and she’s somewhere very far away.

The water finally laps over his feet, icy cold. It was never that cold before. Celia’s still holding onto him, one arm tangled around his waist and the other curled around his neck.

He expects to feel something. The salt and the water coming to take him back.

Nothing happens.

“You need to tell me what to do,” Celia gets out. “I don’t — fuck, something has to happen here.”

He needs to be in, further than his knees. But if she drops him here right now, he’ll drown before he ever changes back. No way he has the energy to keep his head above water. He’s not even sure if he’s right. When that hook caught him two months ago he was already human, got out of the water. He hadn’t healed then. But everyone else always talked about it. The water, and what it did to them. What they could do with it.

The water hits his waist. He tugs at her, weakly, until she lowers him down. She never let’s go of him, and seconds later is nearly submerged in the surf next to him. He can’t even feel his arms where they’re trying to grasp her back, he’s so cold.

She’s still pushing them out, further and further. He’s not really kicking anyway, but when his feet leave the bottom he inches even closer to her, begging to hold on.

There’s no way he’s going to make it on his own, but he has to.

The water finally crests over his shoulders, up his neck, and the sudden burn of agony nearly makes him scream, jaw clenched as the salt pours over the wound. There’s already so much blood in the water, and he goes dizzy when he looks down at it washing off his neck, so dizzy that Celia catches him once again, fingers closing around his jaw.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she breathes. “You gotta focus on changing back, you need to heal.”

He doesn’t even know how. He’s never done it before. There’s no guarantee this works anyway, and he can’t say it, and she doesn’t want to hear it.

“Can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” she fires back. “That’s bullshit. You can.”

Everything just feels so heavy, and the water is freezing, and her hands are shaking where they’re clasped against his jaw, pressing fingerprints into the blood there. He leans his forehead against hers and she clutches him tighter, swallowing.

“You can,” she repeats, softer.

“You gotta let me go,” he says, and more blood spills out into the water for his efforts.

“No.”

“I have to— go under. Can’t take you with me, can’t make you breathe too. Too much energy.”

He wishes he could. He wants nothing more than to take her under with him, to have her there, to watch her breathe in the same space he can. Once she lets go it’s all on him. There’s no one to stop the blood, to hold him, to tell him that he’s going to live.

He has to do that on his own.

He’d nudge a leg against hers, pull back, but he can’t. His feet are tingling, and he can’t tell whether that’s from the magic trying to pull him back, or how numb his extremities are going.

Everything’s so terrifyingly faint. He can hardly make her face out, where it ends and where the water begins. He can’t tell if he’s holding onto her or if his arms are just drifting aimlessly through the water, waiting to be let go of.

“Let me go,” he repeats, the words clearer than anything else. She pulls back, presses her lips against his forehead.

“Come back,” she says quietly. “God, please come back.”

He will. He has to. He just hopes he remembers it, hopes that once the fog lifts his brain tells him to go back up. Back to her. It’s not being very reliable right now, and he wouldn’t expect it to be. His eyes are foggy but the water around him is red. He doesn’t have to see it to know.

She lets go of him. He doesn’t so much go under willingly as he sinks.

With nothing to hold onto, nothing anchoring him to one spot, he slips under. The waves sting against his face, more salt rushing into the open wound, but he doesn’t feel the need to hold onto it.

Like he said, there’s nothing to hold onto.

It’s even quieter down here. Everything in him goes numb. He’s so used to being able to see, to being able to feel the water moving around him, following his every moment.

Now it’s just cold. Cold, and terrifyingly quiet.

But that burn is still there. In his neck. In his legs. In-between his fingers.

It’s happening. He just has to let it happen.

He closes his eyes.

—

—

—

Celia sits on the beach for hours.

There’s nothing else to do. Eventually she returns to shore, dragging her feet through the sand, soaked to the bone and freezing. She watches, and waits, for any sign that something’s happening, for any sign that he’ll live through it.

She never gets one.

Eventually she returns to the car, still shivering, and as soon as the door is closed she chokes back the terrified sobs that are threatening to rise, trying to convince herself that there’s no reason for them. She won’t sit here and cry until he comes back.

Because he’s going to. He’s going to come back.

It becomes something of a mantra, over the next several hours. She sits there in the dark, shivering until she eventually tugs a threadbare blanket out of the backseat, tucking it around her shoulders. She’s nauseous and shaky and she props her chin up on the top of the steering wheel, trying to catch a glimpse of something in the waves. Anything at all.

The sky lightens far quicker down this close than it does even back at the hotel. It picks out the now-dried flakes of blood wedged underneath her fingernails, the only part that remains. Everything else washed off her hands and arms, and even her shirt is mostly clean. Even then the light isn’t enough – the sun never emerges. The air never warms. She wraps her arms around herself, pressing in against the ridges of her ribs, and can feel her own heartbeat still within them, so loud.

She’s seen blood. A lot of it. When you have the chance to see everything it comes and goes. But even that guy in the car wreck was insurmountable to the amount of blood she had coating her hands, spewing out of Rory’s neck like a faucet turned to full blast. He never should have made it back to her, even a quarter mile down the road. It doesn’t make any sense that he did.

Neither does the figure that she sees when she finally lifts her head back up, like a mirage.

She stares, unwilling to believe it.

It’s him. Hunched over, head down, bare feet dragging through the sand until they scrape against the edge of the parking lot. She throws the door open and he just keep shuffling forward, and she can’t tell if he’s just that exhausted, too exhausted to look up at her, or he can’t just hear her at all.

She leaves the door wide open, making a beeline for him across the parking lot. She’s moving a lot faster than even she expected to, after hours of staring sleeplessly out across the beach, and Rory must think it too. When he’s finally within arms reach he stops, about to glance up at her for the first time and doesn’t get the chance before she throws her arms around him, dragging him up against her.

He makes a vaguely surprised noise, muffled into her shoulder before he concedes to be manhandled into a hug, dropping his head down to press his face against her neck, exhaling deeply.

“Hi,” he mumbles, and she squeezes her eyes shut, clutching him tighter. It’s relieving just to hear the sound of his voice. It’s still not perfect – he sounds exhausted, shaky, but she’ll take anything over how he sounded last night.

“You scared the shit out of me,” she manages. He’s relaxed completely into her, nearly boneless, but his fingers twitch against her back at that.

“Sorry.”

She shakes her head, one hand slipping down the side of his neck. Where so much blood was gushing from his neck last night there’s nothing but a smooth white scar, only just barely raised at the edges. His hand comes up and covers hers, trembling slightly.

“Are you okay?”

“Just— just shaky. I think with all the blood-loss, and the changing back.”

She starts pulling him back to the car, as efficiently as she can when both of them are so adamantly refusing to let go of one another. She turns them around, at least, so she can force him onto the edge of the driver’s seat. He takes the weight off his legs with a sigh of relief, but still has a tight hold on her hand, clutching at it in a way that tells her it’s helping. She doesn’t know with what.

At least letting him go, for the most part, allows her to really get a good look at him. His eyes are shadowed, face a little gaunt – exhausted is probably the most applicable word for their entire situation right now.

“I’m sorry,” she says, before she can tell herself not to say it. He stares.

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not – it’s not fine. I practically chased you out and then you almost _died_ , that’s not fine.”

“I’m okay.”

“That’s not what matters here.”

“I _know_ ,” he insists, and his hand clutches at hers with a renewed intensity. “But I’m fine, just a little— little messed up, I think, and I still don’t really know what’s going on and I was so scared—”

She doesn’t focus on what else he says, the way his voice breaks halfway through becomes the only thing she can focus on, thinking of how terrified he was, bleeding out in her arms. She had thought _she_ was scared. She still wasn’t the one dying.

It’s hard, with how cramped the front seat is, and his legs are still swung onto the ground in her way, but she leans in as well as she can to grab him again. It involves her basically clambering half on top of him in the front seat, fumbling at his salt-sticky skin and still-damp hair before she settles, but his arms snake back around her and squeeze, shaking worse than before even though she’s got him sitting down.

“You’re okay,” she assures him, thanking whoever’s still listening that she gets the chance to say those words, to feel him nod against her as he takes them in.

They’re gonna have to have a talk. At this point, it’s apparently unavoidable. But right now, he’s not in the mindset and right now she just _doesn’t care_.

All she cares about is the feeling of him in her arms, alive and breathing, his pulse thumping steadily, just underneath the scar.

—

—

—

Rory very nearly falls asleep in the car.

He doesn’t know how long they sit there – unknowing who’s really holding onto who, at that point. Eventually Celia makes him get over into the other seat so she can start the car, talking about breakfast and sixteen other things that he won’t even begin to make sense of.

There’s blood on the seat that he’s sitting in, his own blood, and he closes his eyes to avoid seeing it.

Not long after Celia stops, fully intend on dragging him into some random breakfast place off the side of the road and drag him she does. He’s not steady as is, wonders if that’s just how things will always be when he makes the shift back to fully human, and coupled with everything else she loops an arm around his waist and tugs him alongside her, talks to someone inside without letting go of him.

He’s only forced to let go of her when she forces him down, into a booth in the middle of the restaurant. He scoots all the way down to lean against the wall and watches her hesitate before she plops down next to him, foregoing the other side.

“Can you just get me something?” he asks quietly. He’s not even entirely sure he’ll be able to keep his eyes open to converse with a waitress, let alone read a five page menu.

“Pancakes?”

“Pancakes,” he agrees, and she hums something, pressing her shoulder up against his. Right now she could probably feed him a sugar packet off the table and he wouldn’t even notice. His stomach almost feels like it’s about to start eating itself, and he’s torn between the energy he’s going to need to cut up some pancakes, or just falling asleep in them.

“Gonna need a new hotel room,” she says under her breath, flipping a page in the menu. “You bled all over our current one. Should probably just pack up our shit and book it.”

His lips quirk up – he has no idea _why_ , and Celia scowls at him.

“Oh, you find that funny, do you?”

“Not really.” He doesn’t, but God, he’s not sure what else to do. Maybe he really is just losing it. She nudges her shoulder into his again, a bit more insistently.

“You gotta tell me what happened.”

He blinks his eyes open fully, interrupted by the waitress stopping back at the table. Celia rattles some things off as she puts drinks down on the table. He reaches for one of the glasses of orange juice, and Celia slides it closer to him before he’s even halfway there. For the best, because he’s not sure his arms would have stretched that far away.

The waitress collects the menus and walks off. He nearly chugs half the glass before he leans back again, but forces his eyes to stay open.

“I think it was one of those things in the woods. One of the demons.”

“What?”

“It didn’t – it didn’t look like the one Rooke said. It looked more human. But it just felt _wrong_ , like I could tell, and it was following me.”

“And it attacked you?”

“No. No, I just, I was on the way back to the room and it was following me and I knew if I didn’t do anything it would just follow me all the way back, so I took a few turns. Started running. I was pretty proud of myself in the moment. Gotten really fast, couldn’t see it anymore. I thought I would just climb one of the fences around back and lose it, except I got to the top and it was layered with barbed wire, and—”

“No, hold on,” Celia interrupts. “If you’re about to tell me you got thwarted by a fence—”

She trails off, and he stares at her. What did she really expect was going to come out of his mouth?

She leans forward to press her face into the side of his shoulder, and it takes him a long moment to realize that her shaking shoulders are coming from laughter, not tears.

“Now _you’re_ laughing,” he complains. “It’s not like I could go back, that thing was still following me. Thought I could throw myself over it. Nearly ripped my own throat out.”

She’s still laughing, but at least the sound is muffled into his shoulder. If not, every other patron in this place would be looking at the pair of them like they’re insane.

Maybe they are.

“I’m sorry.” She pulls back, enough to get a good look at him. She doesn’t quite hide the amused smirk on her face though. “I thought you got fucking attacked by something, God, I’m so glad that you didn’t, I thought it would be something terrible—”

“That’s not terrible?”

“No, no, it is. You scared me. I thought you weren’t going to come back.”

“I’m always going to come back,” he murmurs, and she nods. Maybe not from death itself, but always the ocean. She’s never had that to fear.

Of course, it only took him nearly dying to prove that. There’s certain methods for everything.

She leans forward again, pressing her face back against his shoulder. He tugs an arm free to curl around her waist, feeling so warm and remembering the feeling of ice, of sinking, of needing air but not having any.

“Blair’s going to make fun of me for this, isn’t he?”

“Oh, totally.”

He sighs, and Celia snorts. “I think everyone will, honestly.”

Of course. That’s better than the alternative, of worrying, of crying. Celia looks a little wrung out herself, not quite as exhausted as he feels but rapidly approaching it. He can only imagine why. He knows exactly what he put her through.

“A fucking fence,” Celia continues, still sounding amused. “God, I—”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m glad you’re okay.”

He closes his eyes again, resorting to leaning back against the wall, but this time he takes her with him, and when she props her chin up on his shoulder to get a good look at him he doesn’t feel the need to run, relief coursing through his veins.

He’s alive. He probably shouldn’t be.

But he is.

—

—

—

He’s even more exhausted when they leave, stumbling half-asleep through the parking lot with a full stomach.

Celia stops him so suddenly that he trips on absolutely nothing but the air, her arms reeling him back to keep him steady. It’s a relief, because if he fell he’s not sure he’d be getting back up.

“Stay here for a second.”

He glances up, when she lets go of him. She’s headed for the car. There’s a piece of paper jammed under one of the windshield wipers, and she snatches it up before it can blow away. He realizes he’s still standing in the middle of the lot, asking to get hit, and slowly meanders after her.

“It’s just a piece of paper,” he mutters, trying to look over her shoulder. His eyes are so blurry he can’t even read it.

“You never said there was anyone else with you,” Celia says flatly, and looks up at him. He reaches for the paper but she pulls it back out of his reach before he gets anywhere close, still slow, energy failing.

“It says – _I saved your life last night, you’re welcome. If you want to thank me in person meet me back here tomorrow_. Someone else was there?”

“No?” he answers, confused. He was just running, as fast as he could manage. There was definitely no one that helped him then. Maybe afterwards, when he was bleeding out all over the sidewalk trying to get back, but no one had swooped in and carried him back. No one had been there to offer any help. It would’ve been a lot easier if that were the case.

Celia sighs, and then crumples the paper into a ball and shoves it in her pocket. “I hate this – not you, just – fuck, I hate never knowing what’s going on.”

“Same,” he mumbles, trying to look around. Whoever left the note has to be long gone by now, but he wouldn’t know otherwise. It feels like he’s swaying in place, already sleepwalking.

“Hey,” Celia says quietly, and squeezes her arm. He falls still. “Get in the car. It’s okay.”

He doesn’t think it is, not really, but listens anyway. She holds his door open until he folds himself up in the passenger seat, already feeling himself fall asleep. She closes it and he leans against it, readily, the familiarity of last night coming back, of the door being his only support when he was bleeding out.

Celia squeezes his hand a second before she starts the car, and he squeezes back for only a second, before he’s out.

—

—

—

He dozes on and off for the better part of an hour.

He has not the faintest clue of what happens in that time. Celia turns the radio all the way down and doesn’t let go of his hand. He’s not sure he trusts her driving one-handed, but he also doesn’t really want to let go.

But she does, at some point, because he recognizes the feeling of nothing being clasped around his own hand, the next time.

He misses it.

But he gets his wish, because some time later her hands are back on him, at his shoulders, gently trying to rouse him. He blinks his eyes open and she’s got his door open again, leaning in to look at him.

“C’mon, get up.”

He looks around. Recognizes none of his surroundings. “Where are we?”

“New hotel. C’mon, you need to sleep.”

“I _was_ sleeping,” he insists, dazedly. “Don’t we need to get our stuff from the old one?”

“And here I thought you woke up once during that. I already went there.”

Well, shit. That’s certainly something. He knew he was out of it, but not this bad. He rolls his head to the left, towards the back-seat. It’s empty. There’s a strong chance Celia’s already brought all their stuff up to this new room while he was virtually comatose in the front seat.

Her hands have slipped away, and he starts missing them again. He has to be delusional. He’s pretty certain that if he dares to look at her right now he’ll see three different copies of her, which isn’t going to help his idea any. He reaches out a hand instead, wiggling it anxiously until she grabs on. She must think she’s about to pull him out, so when he tugs at her instead, pulling her nearly over top of him, she blinks in alarm.

“You gotta help me out here,” he mumbles, and then drags her down and kisses her.

He nearly misses, and that’s about the most terribly embarrassing thing he could think of to happen right now, but he really can’t see straight at all. Celia’s still clutching at his hand, and it tightens around his the second their lips touch.

Talk about a surprise for the both of them. He can’t remember thinking he was going to do this thirty seconds ago.

He has to pull back sooner than he really wants to, to draw a breath in, but she doesn’t go anywhere. She’s got a hand braced on the back of his seat to keep herself from falling into him, hand still tangled in his.

“What was that for?” she asks quietly. Nervously.

“I was dying,” he reminds her. “Got scared that I was never gonna get the chance.”

“Because that was absolutely the number one thing you were thinking about when you were dying.”

“I don’t know, it was up there,” he slurs, voice nearly failing him, and she chuckles. She kisses him on the forehead – that’s about where his own lips almost landed, and then tugs him out of the car before he can fight her on it. She pulls him all the way up to the room, and the whole time he can smell the salt in the air. They’re close. Closer than they were before.

The room is bigger than the first one, too, and he can’t imagine this is what they’re supposed to be using Dimara’s credit card for, but he’s too tired to care.

Celia all but shoves him onto the bed, and he manages to drag one of the blankets over himself before his head hits the pillow. He watches Celia draw the curtain shut, plunging the mid-day room into near-darkness, but not before she opens the window as far as it will go. She throws herself down next to him, and he hears the ocean, and the birds, and everything else all going on just outside.

“We’re really close,” he says, obviously, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“Yeah, we are.”

“Thanks.”

She hums in acknowledgement. It’s getting hard to stare at her, and she looks down at him. She looks annoyed, but not the typical brand. It’s mixed with a level of fondness that she didn’t like to openly share before.

“Go to sleep.”

“You too,” he protests. There’s no way she slept either, not either night. He can see it in her eyes. She rolls her eyes, tired as they may be, and wiggles closer to him, until she can tug some of the blanket off of him and over herself. It’s then that he finally concedes to close his eyes, and Celia curls a hand around his waist, barely there.

“I’m sorry for calling you a liar,” he manages.

“It’s fine. Like you said, it’s the truth.”

He shakes his head. Sort of. “It’s not. And I’m sorry for being gone so long. And for making you think I wasn’t coming back at all. And—”

“Rory.”

“What?”

“ _Go to sleep_.”

He falls silent. The second he does Celia rubs her hand down his back. It feels nice. Nicer than anything he thought he’d get, but most of that was while he was trying not to die last night. He can just manage to hear the water, too, if he strains his ears, and Celia slides down the last few inches until they’re right alongside each other.

And for once, the silence doesn’t seem so terrible.

—

—

—August 21st, 2018.

She expects him to be out for three full days, with the way he was acting.

They both sleep right through to the next morning. He knew, tired as he was, that she was equally exhausted. She wakes up and is still pressed right against him, only he’s turned around the opposite way and she’s curled up against his back, still holding onto him.

He’s breathing deeply, evenly. Doesn’t look quite so pale anymore.

She lets out a very long, relieved breath.

There’s no real way to explain the difference between what she felt two nights ago, and the one she feels right now. There’s still things looming over them, weighty, important ones that need to be talked about, but right now they’re both alive, and she’ll take it.

That still doesn’t change the fact that something nearly life-shattering happened, and while they both thought it was on him, apparently that wasn’t the case.

The note is still weighing heavily in her mind, the possibility that someone out there had a hand in saving his life from the shadows. Celia had no idea what the note could even begin to mean. Rory seems certain that he walked back here on his own. She can’t shake the fact that injured and bleeding out that thing would’ve caught up to him, before he _did_ get back.

Could someone, or something, have stopped that?

It’s a possibility.

She checks the phone. 10:14. Later than what it was yesterday morning, when they were getting breakfast in the first place, but maybe not too late.

She sits up and looks over him. He’s not in danger anymore, curled up tight and warm and content right next to her. The same exhausted, terrified person who had nearly bled out in her arms, who went back to the ocean and pulled himself back out on his own to come back.

To come back to her, she realizes now, considering this is the same person that also decided to kiss her, in the middle of said exhausted stupor.

She reaches forward and brushes some of the hair off of his forehead, re-tucking the blanket around his shoulders. She’s comforted by the fact that he doesn’t even stir; no way he’s going to be up and ready to go right now. It also means he may not notice, if she goes. She lets her hand linger over his arm for a minute, considering, and then carefully removes herself from the bed.

If he’s allowed to wander off and almost get himself killed, then so is she.

But let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.

—

—

—

She leaves Rory the phone, just in case, and a note telling him to call Dimara, if she’s not back by noon.

The parking lot is almost entirely empty when she pulls in, nowhere near as busy as it was yesterday morning. She still doesn’t look very well put-together, rumpled around the edges. There’s another twelve hours of sleep waiting for her back at the hotel, but first she has to know.

Not knowing will eat her alive.

She gets out and takes a look around, but it doesn’t appear that anyone’s anywhere close. There’s only three or four patrons inside the entire restaurant, and not one of them looks her way when she walks in, staring around for someone to catch her eye. Eventually the girl waiting at the front stand for her starts to look a bit perturbed, so Celia lets her lead her to a seat.

Well, at least if this is a bust she can bring some food back. One good thing will come out of this.

It turns out she shouldn’t have been looking at all. It takes all of five minutes. The waitress brings her a coffee and Celia spends four of those minutes aimlessly stirring it, wondering how long she should sit here before she gives up.

The boy that comes from behind her and suddenly sits down in the seat across from her was absolutely not in the restaurant when she walked in, that much she’s sure of, and she’s had a clear view of the door since she sat down. She opens her mouth, and he holds up a finger, working away at texting with the other. After a moment he tosses the phone down on the table and looks up at her.

He smiles. She frowns.

“Sorry,” he says, and she looks over her shoulder. He definitely wasn’t there before, and now the person who was occupying the lone two-seater table in the far corner is gone. Someone she distinctly remembers looking absolutely nothing like the one sitting in front of her.

“Are you—”

He shakes his head before she can even ask. Well, he knows what she means then, so that’s something. The waitress stops at the table and looks down at him, clearly confused. She too glances up, towards the now empty table, and tilts her head. She looks like she’s trying to figure it out.

Celia should probably tell her to stop, because she doesn’t have the faintest clue either.

And she really is about to tell her that, too, but two seconds later someone rounds the chair behind the guy and sits down in the one next to him. Girl, this time. Younger looking, but not too young. She doesn’t meet Celia’s eyes, looking up at the waitress instead.

“Can I get a coffee too, please? Do you want anything, Tae?”

“Are you paying?”

“Sure.”

The waitress is looking more and more confused by the second. Celia wonders if every day is this odd and out of place, in here, or if it’s just these two that do it.

He considers that, apparently. “Root beer float.”

“It’s ten thirty in the morning.”

“So?”

It gets scribbled down though, and Celia suspects that the waitress was just taking whatever she could get, before they hung her up anymore. She glances back one more time. That little corner table is still empty.

“You better not tell me you’re here alone because he up and died anyway,” the girl says.

“Hi, this is Anya,” he informs her. “And I’m Tavian. Excuse her.”

“Excuse yourself, you’re the one drinking a root beer float before noon,” she fires back. Celia would probably be doing that herself, if she didn’t fear getting judged for it. “So, is he dead, or what?”

“He’s alive,” she says flatly. “Apparently thanks to you? What, did you chase the thing off?”

“What thing?” she asks.

So, this Anya is half-fucking with her, half-not. She must be. She participated in saving Rory’s life but didn’t actually intervene? How is that saving then, at all?

“Should I just leave?” Celia asks. It’s seeming more and more likely by the second, that this was pointless.

“Look, clearly he needed some help,” Anya says. “Just trying to provide that, as usual. When I can anyway. I thought that maybe the two of you were in some sort of predicament that may require needing it in the future.”

“So how did you help him, then?” she asks. “If you didn’t chase it off—”

“Valkyries have some weird voodoo magic,” Tavian says, and Anya knocks him so hard in the shoulder he nearly careens off the chair into the waitress holding onto his float. He rights himself quickly, no matter how much it looks as if Anya wants to throttle him again, and falls quiet until she places the drinks down on the table, quickly taking her leave.

“Please don’t say that word in public,” Anya says under her breath.

“What word—”

“The V word.”

Tavian raises his eyebrows. “The… V word. Are we talking about Vance?”

Celia’s brain changes course very quickly, from Valkyrie to Vance, and her very large sip of her topped up coffee dribbles half out of her mouth and onto the table. Tavian slides a stack of napkins at her without missing a beat.

“The other V word that you mentioned two seconds previous,” Anya mutters, and Tavian looks at her, taking a very long sip of his float. “The search got fucking suspended anyway, didn’t it?”

“Apparently. His parents think he ran off, because he wanted to go to school in New York. I’d probably run away too if I got stuck rooming at MECA with me.”

If Celia’s eyes aren’t on the table in front of her, she’ll be honest to god shocked. The glance Tavian sends her away confirms that it can’t be quite that bad, or maybe he’s just being nice enough to point it out. It’s probably a good thing she left Rory in the room. He probably would have fallen onto the floor by now.

“Who is—”

“My roommate at College,” Tavian explains. She’ll be damned if it’s not connected. “He went missing in June.”

She really should just run back to the car.

“And,” she forces. “And you’re a – a Valkyrie?”

“She sure is,” Tavian says, busying himself with trying to scoop the ice cream out of his glass with a very narrow straw. She knows those exist, sure. But not down here. They’re just supposed to take the right people to the right place, after death. Not stop it before it happens, intervening in the human world.

“It’s not really a conscious decision I make,” Anya explains. “Sometimes, if I’m in the right place I just… feel it. Someone dying. Not too far off from how a banshee would. But if it happens, and if the person’s not meant to die right there, then it’s kinda like he said. Voodoo magic. Like an aura that spreads, that keeps them alive. Not indefinitely, but. Usually it gives them enough time to live.”

Deep down, Celia knew he should have died. That no one, human or not, isn’t meant to survive an injury of that magnitude. Hearing someone else say it though, is ten times worse. Anya was close by. She felt him dying.

Celia envies her for that, for knowing when it’s happening, and hates it all at the same time.

“It’s almost like a temporary link,” Anya continues. “I knew that he made it somewhere, I just couldn’t tell where. And the next morning I couldn’t feel him anymore, so I knew he was alive. I went looking.”

“And you found us,” she says quietly. “He wouldn’t be alive, if you hadn’t—”

“Not to be the bearer of bad news, but definitely not,” Anya says. “But that’s what I’m here for, so.”

Celia feels almost something like a little connection herself, the same trickle that she felt towards Dimara. Beings of the afterlife, together on the ground. There’s no other explanation for it. And this girl just saved Rory’s life, indirectly or not. Celia wouldn’t have gotten him back if Anya hadn’t been anywhere close to him.

He may have been strong enough to pull himself back out of the ocean, but even he wasn’t meant to survive that.

She takes a deep breath. “Thank-you.”

“No problem.”

“I’m serious. Thank-you.”

Anya nods, and then downs the rest of her coffee. Celia watches her stand up, slapping twenty dollars down on the table.

“You’re going?” she asks.

“Gotta drive this idiot to work, so yeah. Thought you weren’t coming.”

“Slept in. You might be right, about us needing you. If we do…”

“I’m not a hotline,” Anya says. “Doesn’t work like that. If someone’s dying, don’t call me. This place isn’t that big; I’ll feel it if I’m meant to stop it.”

She scribbles something down on a napkin, and slides it across the table towards Celia, through the icy condensation left from the float glass. It’s a number, one that Celia’s apparently not supposed to call if something bad is happening, but it’s a number nonetheless.

Even if she’s not sure of what to do with it, Rory might want it too.

“See you around,” Anya says, and swings her purse back over her shoulder. Tavian waves at her, before he steps outside, and she leans back in the chair, feeling the front legs lift up. There’s enough money on the table to pay for what’s here, and at least a meal too.

She’s hungry, and Rory will be too. She’s still tired.

But she has a phone number.

She goes to wait outside, after placing an order, to take a deep breath away from the stifling air of the restaurant, and watches them peel out of the parking lot. Everyone just looks like that, out here. Normal. Every-day. Average.

Like nothing’s ever really happened.

She goes back in to get the food, fifteen minutes later, and doesn’t even feel bad when she uses Anya’s leftover money to pay for it. Is this what almost human generosity looks like? If she’s being honest, it’s not all that terrible.

The only thing that is terrible, she realizes when she grabs the food, headed back for the door, is that corner table.

It’s still empty.

And she still has no idea why.

—

—

—

It takes Rory nearly ten minutes to properly wake up.

There’s a bit of shuffling behind him, the faint sound of the television. He’s so tangled in the blankets he can hardly see out of them, but there’s the edge of something warm pressed up against the center of his back.

The room’s still very dark. It almost looked the same when his eyes were closed. He rolls over, squinting, and directly into Celia. It’s her knee that was touching him, and she retracts it when he pulls himself over.

He also lands nearly in the middle of whatever take-out container Celia has in the middle of the bed, and she yanks it away before he can successfully knock it all over the bed.

He can’t even manage to say anything for a bit. He scoots over, until his face is pressed back into the warmth of her leg, and one of her arms loops around him, to scratch gently over the base of his neck. It’s still quiet enough that he could go back to sleep, but his stomach is starting to become a problem. He reaches out, blindly, and two seconds later something nudges back against his hand. It’s warm, smells like food, and if Celia’s giving it to him it sure better be. He shoves half of what turns out to be a chicken finger into his mouth without ever looking.

“I literally could’ve fed you the remote,” Celia says, amused, and he makes a noise of protest. It’s not very easy chewing and laying nearly face down in the pillow, so he sits up a bit. Celia’s hand falls away so he leans into her side instead, trying to focus on the television. It doesn’t work.

“Where’d you go?” he mumbles.

“Back to the restaurant.”

He finishes the entirety of the chicken finger before the realization dawns on him, and he blinks up at her. “Did you meet whoever it was?”

“Sure did. And she sure did save your life, it appears.”

“Really?

“Yeah. Valkyrie. It was like magic. Not witch magic. I don’t know what. But it did something that kept you alive, whatever it was. Made you go faster or bleed less or maybe it made that thing lose your trail. But it was something.”

“I should’ve known I wasn’t that fast.”

Celia lets out an amused huff. “Maybe you were. Never know.”

No, he’s pretty sure he does. Celia hands him a few fries, too, and then a drink off the bedside table, and he works through it all methodically. He already feels like he could go back to sleep, and it looks like she’s going to let him. When he’s finished she doesn’t even try to force him back down; she leans back, enough that he can basically go to sleep half on top of her, if he so wishes.

“You’re not gonna move the rest of the day if you let me do this,” he informs her, already laying his head down on her shoulder, curling back up against her side. He feels her shrug.

“I’m fine with that.”

So is he. She tilts her head – probably still watching the TV, over his own, and he closes his eyes.

“I got her number, if you want to talk to her.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s in the phone, Anya. You might like her.”

“Did you?”

“I by default like anyone that saves your life, so yes.”

He smiles. Even though she’s got both arms wrapped around him she still feels slightly tense. Maybe because of the angle. That, or he’s squishing her.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m good. Why?”

He’s uncertain of how to really go about this. He thought it, before he fell asleep last night, and knew he dfinitely didn’t have the energy or raised concern to bring it up. But he’s a little better now, and even if he’s ready to drop back off he still wants to know.

“Can I ask,” he starts. “Can I ask what happened? Before I left?”

He still has not the faintest clue, what finally made her explode. That’s what it seemed like. Like something lit her fuse and it finally hit the bottom and it just _happened_. He stood in her radius when her self-titled bomb went off. Not a good place to be.

She sighs. He feels her look up, so he closes his eyes. He shouldn’t expect an answer. Not this soon, anyway.

“I’m angry a lot, I’ve realized,” she says after a moment.

“That’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. I don’t want to be. Especially not at you.”

“What did I do, then?”

“ _Nothing_ ,” she insists. “That’s the thing, you didn’t do anything. I had this dream, I guess. It felt like a dream. And I saw someone and the way he was talking to me made it seem like I should be thankful, for the fact that I’m down here right now. That would be like asking you to be happy after what happened to you, which makes it worse. I feel like a hypocrite for making you feel bad. You wanting to go back isn’t a bad thing, I just—”

“I just what?”

“I just don’t want you to?” she says, almost sounding confused. “I really don’t fucking want you to.”

He felt like he almost knew that, deep down. He knew it in the same way he knew he was never going to be the one to push her to admit it.

“I have good days and bad days,” he says quietly. “When we found that accident I just thought about how easy it would be to go back. I don’t have a ton of those days anymore. I like it here. I like you. I like all of you.”

“I’m touched.”

“I like you more than I like anyone else.”

“Someone’s bound to be offended by that,” she points out, and he smiles. He doesn’t have the energy to lift his head and kiss her, even though he really wants to. Last night wasn’t just a fluke.

“I wanna kiss you again but I don’t think I can get there this time,” he tells her.

“Guess you’ll just have to wait until you wake up, then.”

He makes a face, and she laughs. Genuinely, and openly, and hearing it feels like one of the best things ever. She jostles him a bit when she kisses the top of his head, and then his temple. The only two places she can really reach, but he’s fine with it. It’s better than what he was planning on.

He relaxes again, and they both go still.

“We’re gonna be okay,” Celia murmurs after a moment, and he nods, letting his eyes slip shut.

They will be.

And now they both know it.

—

—

—September 7thth, 2018.

Celia’s really glad that she has nothing more to lie about.

It seems pretty set in stone, that people always have secrets kept in-between them, but that’s not the relationship she wants with Rory. She’s sure he doesn’t want that, either. They’re both sick of the lies, even the ones by omission.

The best part of all is that she didn’t have to lie, about being okay. She really, truly feels it. She doesn’t think she’s actually felt it since her feet touched the ground.

They’re still taking this slow. Trying to, anyway. Talking about every single little thing they can think of. What she had. What he had. What he wants to show her, if he still can one day. How much she’d be willing to do just that.

Right now, she’s sitting in the sand, nearly touching the water, watching it all. It’s a little gloomy, and not many people are down here, but she is.

And Rory, who sits down next to her with a thump, stretching out his legs. The waves roll back up and he retracts them, following the motions.

“Playing a dangerous game,” she murmurs, and he cracks a smile.

“No one around to see, anyway.”

She eyes the scar at the base of his neck and folds her hand over it. He turns towards her, still with that smile, and presses it against her knuckles.

“Dimara called. She wants to meet back up before the end of September.”

“Does she?”

He nods. Celia was half-expecting it, after Dimara’s text last night, asking if they made the right decision. That still doesn’t make the realization any easier. They made progress, the two of them alone. Progress so deep that she’s certain there’s no going back from it, if either of them even wanted to.

“Did she say why?”

“No. She sounds off, though. I feel bad. It can’t have been easy, being alone all this time.”

No, it can’t have been. Celia doesn’t envy her any for that, dealing with everything. Not that she even knows what everything is. The odd times Celia feels obligated to answer the phone nothing Dimara tells her is ever a shade beyond cryptic.

And selfishly, she thinks that’s a good thing. The two of them have basically been in their own little world out here, and it’s done them a lot of good. She’s felt all of the anger get tugged out to sea, beautifully enough, and when she watches Rory follow it with his eyes he doesn’t look quite so forlorn anymore. There’s not as much longing deep down inside him as there was before.

Or maybe he’s just channeling it into something else.

Celia feels like she’s learned a lot, being along with him. She still feels like there’s a ton more things to learn, too, but their time is being brought to an end.

But just because their time ends doesn’t mean they end, too.

He’s tucked his hand over hers, now, where it still rests against his neck. His pulse is strong once again. Not like it almost ever left.

She feels like she stares at him a lot. The first few times he looked back at her she wanted to run in the opposite direction.

She doesn’t feel that way much, anymore.

If at all.

“We’re good, hey?” he asks, and kisses at her knuckles again.

Maybe they shouldn’t be. Maybe that’s wrong. But for once in her life living in blissful ignorance doesn’t seem so far-fetched. It feels safe, to be in a world where things protect them, where death doesn’t come to steal them away because it’s not their time.

“Sure are,” Celia answers, and he props his head up on his knees, eyes staring out at the ocean.

They really are the same color.

She has no idea why she never connected that, all the way from the get-go.

—

—

—September 14th, 2018.

Rory hasn’t woken up alone in just over three weeks.

It’s odd, to stretch his legs out and not feel Celia there, no matter how far he pushes. The sheets are still faintly warm, and he rolls over and opens his eyes, looking for her. The balcony door is cracked open and she’s leaning against the half-wall, fingers tapping at the top railing, looking out.

She hasn’t had any more of those dreams.

He forces himself to crawl out of the bed, and searches blindly along the floor for his shirt for all of two seconds before he gives up and heads for the balcony. It becomes pretty evident why he couldn’t find it in the first place, when he slides the door open even further, and that’s because Celia’s apparently decided it now belongs to her.

“That’s mine,” he informs her, and wraps his arms around her waist. He feels the eye-roll, can imagine it all too clearly, but she lets go of the railings to grab at his hands, instead.

“You weren’t using it.”

Well, he can’t argue that. He might’ve, if she hadn’t decided to commandeer it, but he can’t really raise the energy to complain about it now. Besides, it’s not like he really minds, anyway.

She doesn’t seem tense, or worried. Not like she just pulled herself back out of another one of those dreams, or even worse, a nightmare. She just seems quiet, so he stays that way too, relaxed in the breeze with her up against his chest, content with himself.

He could be dead right now. He could be dead several times over.

He never worked up the nerve to text Anya, but he still wants to. Maybe one day, when they’re settled back down. He’d like to meet her. Thank her in person, like the note said. Dimara always said that friends could be a good thing, if you found the right ones.

And maybe she would be, if he grew brave enough to find out.

But for now he’s perfectly happy with where he is, even if they have to go back to reality in a few short days. He can handle that too.

“I’ve come to a conclusion,” Celia says suddenly, but her voice is still hardly above a whisper. He presses a little closer to her, if that’s even possible, listening.

“And what would that be?”

“That I really am a liar.”

“You’re not,” he says quietly. “You know you’re not.”

“No, I am,” she counters, but she doesn’t sound so bitter, like before. “I am, because I think this might’ve been the right thing all along. I think, maybe, and don’t rub this in, that falling might have been the best thing that could’ve happened to me.”

The words hit him, definitely, but they don’t quite sink in. He stays silent for a few more long, unbroken moments, until Celia peers at him over her shoulder. She’s starting to look worried, but now it’s directed at him.

Or maybe she’s just worried that she said the wrong thing. That’s a true admission. Of something, anyway. He’s not really sure what, just yet, but something. Clearly it took her a while to get out, to come up with in the first place.

“Really?” he murmurs, and she nods.

“I don’t expect you to say the same thing,” she tells him. “It’s different, I know that now. But I really think it was a good thing.”

God, he feels like he could cry. He must be close, obviously so, because Celia shakes her head, lips pursed in amusement. “Don’t.”

“You can’t drop something like that on me in the middle of the night,” he complains, and buries his face in the top of her shoulder. She kisses what little of his face she can see; his cheek, and then his temple, and he leans into her. He’s been doing that a lot, lately, and he’s certainly not about to start depriving himself of it now.

Distantly, he hears the chime of the cell phone, deep in the room, but takes a deep breath before he looks back up.

“Oh, don’t you go anywhere,” Celia insists. “Not before I—”

He manages to tug himself away from her, and grabs at the phone before she manages to pull him back outside onto the balcony. This time it’s her arms around his waist, and for all the mock-complaining and running off he still leans down to meet her halfway. And it still feels just as safe and warm as the other times, kissing her. Like it’s something to be expected now, something they do as easy as breathing.

He pulls back, but leans his forehead against hers. She waits, not so patiently, and he still can’t wipe the half-smile off his face when he leans down to kiss her on the forehead instead. The only safe place he’s got right now, with her so close to him.

He takes a deep breath, pulling away, and presses _answer._ “Dimara. What’s up?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "cliffhanger" won't be solved until like, chapter four. For anyone wondering. One day.


	3. The First Cut

** Body #2, again: ** Less than ten people show up to it’s funeral.

—

—

— August 12 th , 2018.

Vance is becoming somewhat of an expert at being terrified.

It’s still two days off. There’s no real reason to be, not yet. They have a plan. Sort of. The only issue he can see is that last time this happened, he had more people to worry about, all around him. This time there are less, but that may cause more problems than solutions it brings.

It’s riding on Nadir, to make sure this all goes right, because when he’s a full-grown wolf he’s not going be thinking about what goes right and what doesn’t, and Kelsea certainly isn’t going to do anything to stop him.

Kelsea’s not going to do much of anything except distract him, apparently.

They know where they’re setting up the full moon shop, and they’ve got a little motel room just down the block. Tucked in-between that, and the very old storage unit that once belonged to  Dimara’s  grandmother, his new home in two nights time, is an animal shelter.

He has no idea why either of them thought going into an animal shelter with  _ Kelsea  _ of all people was ever a good idea.

“This place is sketching me out,” Nadir mutters. Vance is inclined to agree with her. Everything is very clean and white and smells clinical. There’s a little camera over the front desk . He’s reminded of the fact that he’s still technically a missing persons, and the government could be after them. If Kelsea’s noticing any of this, she doesn’t appear to care.

“Can we take them all?” Kelsea asks.

“Absolutely not.”

Vance was expecting that answer, too, but the look on Kelsea’s face makes it a little funnier. If she ever comes across a single dog, cat or rabbit that she doesn’t want in this building, Vance would be a little worried. She’d probably adopt every mouse too, while she’s at it, and not care who wanted them around or who didn’t.

He has to admit, the idea’s tempting. He’s never really had a pet before either. But now is not the time, when they don’t have anywhere to call home.

And he has no idea how to take care of one, either. Ironic, he knows.

There’s a little puppy in the cage in the far corner and Kelsea goes running up before he can think to stop her from getting attached. The puppy looks very  terrified  at her sudden arrival; Kelsea could probably hold the thing in both of her hands.

Kelsea’s still cooing at the thing and making enough racket that one of the employees is going to be on them, soon, asking if they want to take it home , a non-existent place right now . He stops and stares out the window. The garishly orange doors of the storage units are still visible across the road, not yet blocked by traffic. Not even two days. Tomorrow night, really.

He’s terrified. His pulse is already slamming so fast in his chest it almost hurts, and he’s reminded of the fact that he could change any minute now. After the first time, it could just happen. Right here, in the middle of this building, with all these innocent people. Broad daylight.

Nadir nudges him. “ Stop.”

He nearly hits the wall. She doesn’t stop, still headed after Kelsea, but it brings him back to reality.  It looks as if she’s finally convinced the little thing to come up to her, it’s eyes slightly more enthusiastic.

Nothing’s happening. He’s not changing. He’s fine here, and he’s safe, and he’s not in any pain. There’s no reason for him to.

But that still doesn’t change the fact that those won’t be facts, for very much longer.

—

—

— August 14 th , 2018.

The few hours after midnight have become the worst for them, and Kelsea knows it.

It’s like the witching hour come to life , if it really truly exists. She wouldn’t know, tucked away into the woods alongside her family for as long as she can remember.  But everyone thinks the same things, about what happens in those hours. That’s when people go missing. When the blood flows.

When the bad things all come out.

And maybe she’d believe the opposite, because that’s all she can try to do, if she already hadn’t been witness to so many of those things. Maybe it could be a coincidence, if not for that.

Considering she was about to maybe-witness another one, Kelsea didn’t know if she could trust maybe’s anymore.

Not after tonight.

When you have to lock up the person you’re pretty sure is your best friend behind the door of a storage unit and listen for hours to the sound of him screaming, the maybe of how terrible the world is becomes a lot more of a certainty.  Where last time she was banished upstairs, thanks to a feeble cellar door and the impending danger behind it, this time there’s no reason to run. She doesn’t think the door will break, as the hours grow closer to dawn and he presumably grows weaker. The whole thing is shaking like it’s about to come down, but she’s not scared like she was.

Besides, the sky is starting to lighten, far away on the horizon. The more signs she sees of morning the less noise she starts to hear from behind her. Nadir’s gone wandering off to the front gate a few times, now, to make sure no one else is coming in from the street, and she’s still gone when the noises die off entirely, leaving Kelsea sitting there in near-silence.

The silence is so jarring that she turns to the side, eyeing the door.

Blair’s not here right now. He’s not here to tell her that Vance is back for certain. The only way she finds out is opening the door.

Nadir left the key  with her. She’s not so sure that seems like a smart idea, anymore.

Still, that doesn’t stop her from edging closer to the door, leaving behind the backpack full of Vance’s things. There’s not even a sign of life when she presses her ear against it. Last time, Vance called back to her. This time she’s not even sure she would hear him, if he did. Either he won’t be loud enough or he’s not responding in the first place.

She’s not entirely sure which one’s worse.

She rolls both the key and Vance’s phone between her hands, wondering if she should text Nadir and tell her to come back. She’s probably not that far, anyway, but they’re both exhausted and waiting for the night to be over. It’ll be five minutes before she’s back, at best.

With a sigh, she pockets the phone, sidling as close to the door as she gets, and listens. Still more nothing. Not even the faintest shuffle of a body, human or not. She has no idea what could be on the other side of the door if it’s not Vance, what he’ll actually look like. Werewolves are supposed to be bigger than normal wolves. Faster. Stronger

She puts the key in the lock, soundlessly, and waits.

Still nothing. She glances down the walkway, towards where Nadir last disappeared, but there’s no sign of her.

It doesn’t matter much, anyway. Her decision was already made, and she only left a few seconds for someone to come back and tell her not to. Of the two options she’s got, one’s locked behind this door, and the other’s not around to voice any concerns.

Besides, there’s no sound at all, and it’s starting to worry her. Wolf or not, she should be able to hear something. Vance could have hurt himself – worse than anything she could imagine. It’s that thought that finally pushes her to raise the door a few inches, hand clutching tight at the bottom lip of the door. She can’t quite bring herself to lower herself to the ground to peer in; she stays very still, and then glances down the path again. Still no sign of Nadir.

She takes a deep breath. “Vance, are you okay?”

It’s that, unfortunately for everyone involved, that proves to be the mistake.

It’s not her opening the door. It’s not how close her presence is in the first place. The sound of her voice, too close, echoing into the darkness of the storage room, nearly conceals the sound she hears. The barely-there noise of a shift, a foot scraping along the ground, and a too-long second in which she realizes that there’s no way Vance is walking right now.

Which means it’s not Vance.

She comes nowhere close to bringing the door back down, but she’s not even thinking about that. It’s the panic that hits first, at how quiet everything is to how suddenly loud the animalistic sounds of a wolf are, a foot away from her, nothing but a door between them and her hands that won’t be quick enough to fully shut it.

The force of it crashing in from the other side nearly knocks her away, both of her hands falling to the ground, and two seconds later there are teeth in her arm.

There are actual, literal  _ teeth  _ in her arm.

The scream that escapes from her initially is more shock than actual pain, at the sudden spurt of blood all down her arm, away from the wolf’s mouth, at how quickly the mere inch  of the open door turns to nearly a foot as it shoulders it open to get closer to her.

That’s about all she sees, before she gets dragged in after it.

All the while there are still those teeth, and that’s when the pain finally hits. When she goes spinning into the darkness of the storage room, unable to see anything except the foot of bare light coming in from the outside and a set of eyes, golden as can be, two twin suns.

Somewhere in the middle of it she tries, very dimly, to match those eyes with that of Vance. Vance, who’s currently ripping her arm to shreds, who’s got his blood in her mouth and down his throat, who’s going to kill her if she doesn’t do something.

She can’t pull herself away. She tries to pull backwards and the pain only re-ignites more fiercely. It’s burning. Everything’s burning.

And it’s not Vance. Whatever this is, it’s not Vance. Vance wouldn’t hurt her.

That makes it worse, because he is.

She doesn’t know how much blood she’s losing. Doesn’t really care, because this is probably how she dies anyway. It’s going to rip her throat open, or maybe he is. Maybe he knows exactly who she is and the teeth ripping through all the skin and muscle in her arm, scraping against the bone – maybe he just doesn’t care.

Like she said. Maybe’s were not very trustworthy things.

She goes down on her side, facing in. Or maybe it pulls her again. Now she really can see nothing but the eyes, and they’re so close. Everything else standing right in front of her remains a mystery , and nothing about that could possibly change right now.

She closes her eyes, preparing for one last effort, if she even still has one.

When she re-opens them, quicker than even she expected, the lone box in the corner of the room is on fire.

That’s a development.

“Kelsea!”

And that’s Nadir.

The wolf lets go. There’s fire going over her head, but she’s not sure what she’s supposed to do. Lying there doesn’t seem appropriate, but it’s about all she can do. She’s got light now, a flaming beacon that’s lit up nearly the whole room, and suddenly she can see all the blood all over the floor, gushing down her arm now that there’s nothing holding it in.

There’s not much area for the fire to spread. The wolf goes away from it, but not before she catches a glimpse of just how big it actually is, twice the size of any of them. None of them could do anything, not really.

Except for Nadir. And that was probably the whole point behind them being together.

Clearly the wolf isn’t a fan of the fire. It gets around her, somehow. Arms lock around her and pull her half-way to her feet, dragging her closer to the burning box. It doesn’t feel safe, but nothing does. Nadir’s got her – that has to be good enough.

She lifts her head up, just for a second, and sees the wolf go tumbling out of the room, out onto the walkway. There are woods just beyond this lot, past the shelter. Right next to the street.

He’s out. He’s not supposed to be out.

He can’t be out.

“Kelsea.  Hey.”

Well, that’s definitely Nadir talking to her, unless she’s absolutely lost it, but she can’t manage to tear her eyes away from the door, to where he’s vanished. A moment later she’s jostled, a bit, and she tries to turn back around but something wraps around her forearm. She cries out in pain at the sudden pressure, and grows dizzy when she looks down at the floor, her shoes nearly slipping in all the blood underneath them.

“Take it easy, take it easy,” Nadir urges. “I’ve got you.”

Is that good enough, though? She doesn’t know. She thinks about what her dad always used to say, about being careful.  _ Anything that wants to kill you can kill you. But only if you let it. _

Did she just let Vance kill her, or something else?”

“Nadir,” she says dazedly, and she’s sure the sudden spike of panic once again doesn’t help the blood spurting out of her arm, but she can’t help it. “Nadir, the bite, he  _ bit  _ me,  am I going to — ”

“Calm down,” Nadir says firmly. That would be much easier if Nadir looked calm herself.

The bigger issue is, honestly, is that Kelsea can’t help but calm down. She’s so dizzy she can’t even think straight. It doesn’t feel like her legs are going to hold her up for much longer. She’s not sure if the fire’s what so warm, or if that’s just her. It could be all the blood.

It’s probably all the blood.

She’s never really seen her own blood before.

—

—

—

Nadir had two whole jobs. Take care of Kelsea, and take care of Vance.

That could’ve been just one job, with how closely the two of them are intertwined, but apparently, at least for the time being, it’s decidedly two.

She doesn’t even get Kelsea back to the lot and the car before she has to pick her up. Kelsea’s light as a feather anyway , but that makes the amount of blood even worse. Someone this small should not be capable of bleeding this much. Or at least not be alive this long while it’s happening.

She’s shocked Kelsea’s even conscious, if she’s being perfectly honest. After she bled the whole way to the car, following the already bloody pathway covered with red-smeared pawprints, disappearing all the way across the lot and into the grass beyond it.

The drive back to the motel isn’t even two minutes long, but she spends those entire two minutes thinking about what Kelsea said. About being bitten.

It’s not a guarantee. Being bitten by a werewolf doesn’t mean , for sure, that you’re turning into one. But Nadir doesn’t know the rules, about what happens if you’re already something before. Hybrids exist, rare as they are, but she gets the feeling that not one exists as a crossover between a werewolf and a member of the  fae . Fairies go deep into the woods on a full moon for a reason.

There’s no guarantee. But there’s still a possibility.

Kelsea’s still at least holding onto her, when she walks them backwards into the motel room, letting the door slam shut behind them. She sits her down on the floor in the bathroom, unwilling to trust herself to stay upright anywhere else.

She brought a first aid kit with the intention to use it on whatever Vance did to himself, after tonight. Not on this. Besides, she can already tell just how bad it is. How deep and jagged the wounds are. There’s enough blood on her hands as proof of it.

Nadir’s really not good at dealing with people bleeding in front of her. Alive or not.

“Do you think I’m  gonna  change?” Kelsea asks weakly, and nearly knocks her head into the wall.

“I don’t know,” she answers honestly. “Just try and stay focused.”

“I’m trying,”  she says, voice wavering. “It just hurts, it hurts.”

It’s like she said, Nadir’s surprised she’s even conscious. There are tears in her eyes, threatening to slip down her face, and they finally do when Nadir unwraps her jacket from around her arm. It’s hard to even really tell where the wounds are, and Nadir is definitely not a fucking doctor. Not equipped to deal with this, unless it’s herself. Maybe Vance. Definitely not when it’s Kelsea sobbing on the bathroom floor in front of her, bleeding all over her shoes.

Nadir just wants to yell. Set something else on fire. Wants to ask Kelsea why she ever thought opening the damn door in the first place was a good or sensible idea, especially without her around. She needs to go back out and find Vance, before something else happens.

And she needs to fix this.

She doesn’t have another option.

—

—

— August 15 th , 2018.

Vance wakes up alone, in the middle of the woods, up to his elbows in blood.

He can also taste it. He can’t imagine that’s a good thing.

There’s very few things worse than waking up like this, he reckons. Waking up, unknowing of where you are or  how long it’s been since the last time you remembered anything , every available stick and rock digging into his bare skin, the sharp copper tang of blood clinging to the back of his throat.

And he’s outside.

He… he shouldn’t be outside.

That thought floats back in, slowly, and he presses his forehead into the dirt, trying to focus on something other than the smell of the blood. They locked him up. No chains. They didn’t have any. Closed the door.

The last thing he remembers is one of the bones in his legs, nearly breaking out of his skin.

The last thing he remembers as a human, anyway.

That was one of the worst things, about the first time. The complete lack of memory. He doesn’t remember breaking out of the chains or destroying the wall  or nearly getting through the door to the outside. He doesn’t even remember changing back, just lying there in the aftermath like everything else had been drained from him.

But now is different. There’s something  flickering towards the base of his skull, his brain trying to wake back up. He pushes a hand under himself, rising up onto his hands and knees unsteadily, shaking like a leaf. He gathers all the blood in his mouth and spits a wad of it onto the ground between his hands, watches it splatter and sink into the earth.

He did something bad. There’s blood all over him. They closed the door.

He’s no longer inside.

It feels like his chest constricts and closes up, and when he swallows all the air around him goes down and never gets released. If whatever he did was close by, he’d smell it. He’s in the woods. He can smell the asphalt and the road, ahead of him, see the faint walls of a building just before it. Tries to look back and catch a glimpse of any of the units, but the undergrowth is too thick for him to see out of it, with how dark it is. He’s fine. No injures whatsoever, healing or not.

He did something. Something back there, where he was too close to Kelsea and Nadir, fighting to get out, and he’s  _ out _ —

His heart, stronger than ever before, almost feels like it’s grown claws and teeth itself. It feels like it’s fighting to get out of his chest, slamming so fiercely against his ribcage that it’s all he can feel. In his throat, in his fingertips, in every inch of his body.

He presses his hand against his chest, irrationally terrified. It’s going to get free. He’s going to be dead, because he fucked up, he did something awful and he doesn’t know what, but there’s so much  _ blood _ _. _

The sharp burst of pain out from his fingertips is the first indication, the first sign that his panic is starting to get out of control. He can’t make himself look down. It’s not the full moon anymore; he doesn’t have to change. But he’s losing it anyway, spiraling out of control, and it’s happening. Slowly, steadily, claws bursting free from the skin at the ends of his fingers and digging into his chest where he’s got his hand pressed.

But the pain, the pain distracts from the panic. It shoots through his chest and clenches around his heart in a different way the second the claws dig in. He’s never had a proper look at them before; at least an inch long, what he can see that’s not digging into his chest anyway. And he doesn’t know if he can pull them back out, either. He doesn’t know if that’s smart, doesn’t know if that will make it worse.

But it’s stopped. Nothing else is happening.

He’s still not supposed to be outside.

He glances up, ignoring the ache and burn in his chest. Everything’s spinning, very faintly. He can hear his blood hitting the ground like the rain, even though the sky is clear. It’s echoing all around him.

He can’t be outside. Something bad is going to happen. Something bad did happen, and it’s happening right now, and there are gashes going down his chest for several inches that almost look like miles when he tries to look at them.

Something in his brain knew it wasn’t smart, to look. But his brain isn’t being particularly reliable right now, won’t give him the answers he needs. It won’t tell him how to pull his own hand out of his chest either, no matter how bad the pain skyrockets, no matter how much he’s bleeding out.

He’s probably bleeding out.

That building’s not far away. He should try to get there. Should, but can’t. He can’t even move his legs, and only has one working arm.

Has more blood outside of him than in, too.

There’s one thing acting as a certainty, and one thing only:

At least he knows blacking out is safe.

—

—

— August 20 th , 2018.

It’s been days, and somehow Kelsea knows it, when she doesn’t know anything else.

She doesn’t think she’s woken up in any of those days. At least not for longer than a few seconds. Nadir had her in one of the beds, before she passed out for that final time. And since then it’s been a lot of black.

A lot of black, and a lot of fire.

If the world’s on fire around her and there’s nothing to protect her, she’s not sure how she’s supposed to live. She’s not sure how Vance did, really. He was worse than this, ten times worse. In blinding agony, whimpering from the pain, sometimes clutching onto her hand like a lifeline even when he was out.

She can’t make her own arm move, to do the same.

But something else is moving. Someone else is talking, too. She hopes they’re not talking to her, because she’s absolutely not listening.

She dares to crack her eyes open, finally, and winces at how intrusive the light is. It turns her vision white, and she goes to raise a hand to cover her eyes but can’t. There’s little flashes of something else, darting past too quickly for her to make out.

She’s in the car. Someone else must be in the car with her, if they’re moving. Kelsea and driving doesn’t equal out to a favorable equation, not for anyone involved. She moves her head against the window, tries to figure out what’s going on. There’s a blanket wrapped around her, carrying the musty stench of the motel room, and she still tries to draw it closer. There’s not really a point, when she’s already so warm.

“Hold on for a second. I think she’s awake.”

There’s that voice again. The car slows. She can make out all the trees and grass around them now, less blurry, and Nadir’s face swims into view. It’s clearer than she  thought it would be.

“Hey,  Kels , she says gently. “How you doing?”

“Fine?” she says, or at least tries to. What comes out is more of a pathetic-sounding croak, and she swallows. Her throat feels like sandpaper. She doesn’t really feel fine.

Something nudges into her hand, the one that can still move. “Talk to Blair for a minute, I need to drive.”

“Why?” she mumbles, as Nadir wedges the phone up to her ear.

“That may be the rudest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Blair says, on the phone. “What, you don’t  wanna  talk to me?”

Is saying  _ no _  really that rude? She’s just exhausted. “I’m tired.”

“I know, kiddo. But you’re all good. Nadir’s taking you somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Near Freeport. You know where that is?”

She has no idea where that is, and doesn’t really care. “Where are you?”

“Middle of fucking nowhere, Maine. Where I always am.”

Her lips twitch up, a little bit. At least it’s consistent, and predictable. She knows where Blair is, and the others, and Nadir is in the car next to her, but Vance —

“He didn’t come back,” she says, already knowing the answer. “Where is he?”

That’s the only word she knows, anymore. The only question she can think of to ask.

“Just worry about you,  Kels ,” Blair says. “We’ll find him.”

They haven’t found him. She knows it’s been days. Days and days o f burning, and her vision is still blurry but there are bandages packed around her forearm, spotted through with blood the color of rust. What’s worse – this, or Vance being out there? She’s not even sure what this is, exactly.

“I’m tired,” she says, realizing a second later that she already made that point abundantly clear. It’s a strong one, in the very least.

“Give the phone back to Nadir.”

She does, or at least she tries. She fumbles it and drops it into her lap, but Nadir snatches it up before it can hit the floor, where it would disappear for good. There isn’t a single way Kelsea would be getting it right now.

She’s not sure what she would be doing. She doesn’t know where they’re going, or what happens after this, or where Vance is.

She doesn’t even know if she survives, just yet.

—

—

—

“Are you entirely sure I’m doing the right thing?” Nadir asks.

“Asking me about the concept of doing the right thing is your first mistake there.”

She sighs, and turns down the last road, ignoring the garishly yellow DEAD END sign. Kelsea’s out again, and Blair’s voice was doing wonders for keeping her company when she’s had not a single person to talk to the past five days, but now she’s just worried again.

The thing is, it doesn’t matter if she’s doing the right thing. It’s the only thing. Kelsea’s not getting better, but she’s not really getting worse. Vance was healed and walking by now, after he got attacked.

It took until this morning to finally cave, watching Kelsea curled in on herself, shaking all the way through the night. And she had come damn close to crying when Blair had answered the phone, ready for casual conversation. Unprepared for anything but.

There’s no houses on this street, save for the faint shadow of one at the very end. It looks even worse than theirs does, completely abandoned, desolate. She would believe it, if not for the two cars parked in the middle of the weeds in the driveway, nothing but green around them for a solid mile. It doesn’t even look like it should be standing.

She stops the car on the road, and stares.  Not ten seconds later the front door opens, and someone steps onto the rickety wooden porch. It looks like he  could  collapse it.

“You trust these people?” she asks, and slips out of the car.

“I don’t trust anyone.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re not anyone,” he says, which is fair enough. She skirts around the front of the car, trying to keep one eye on him and one on Kelsea. Neither are moving. She’s not sure it matters. Blair’s given her the run-down anyone. There’s no way this person is anyone other than who Blair says it is.

“Camden Kershaw?” she yells. The guy leans forward over the railing a bit, and she waits for it to snap in half.

“That’s creepy!” he shouts in response.

“Blair Carnell,” she says in response. “You know that name too?”

“Absolutely hate that name. Why?”

“He’s right, I do hate him,” Blair offers. “He’s an asshole.”

“Well, they attract each-other, don’t they?”

“That’s very touching.”

If she doesn’t joke right now she’ll probably just die here on this un-managed road, if Camden Kershaw doesn’t kill her first. He looks like the type.

“I’ll call you later,” she says quietly. “If I’m still alive.”

“I get the feeling you will be. Please do.”

Forcing herself to hang up feels like it takes a year, and when she pockets her phone he’s still staring at her, coming down the stairs. She backs up to the door and cracks it open, but doesn’t do anything else. He gets closer and closer. She’s not afraid, necessarily. She hasn’t been properly scared of another person coming at her in a long while.

But this is different. She’s got shit riding on this.

“You know Blair? That’s tragic,” Camden says. He stops and leans against the hood of the car, looking right in. “The fuck’s wrong with her?”

If only Nadir had the answer for that. “Why do you think I’m here?”

She’s here because she didn’t know where else to go, and Blair gave her a direction. A direction that looked a lot like a prayer, in the midst of how worried she’s been.

“Well, she looks pretty terrible,” Camden informs her.

“Thank you for telling me, I hadn’t noticed. Now who the fuck do I need to talk to, because it clearly isn’t you.”

Camden stares, and puts a hand on the door, peering in further. She tightens her grip on it, preparing for him to pull it open, but he doesn’t. “Seriously, what’s wrong with her?”

Nadir’s already beyond exasperated. She can finally understand, how Blair met this guy and managed to hate him from one interaction. She flings the door wide open and his hand falls to his side. 

“She’s a member of the Fae that got bit by a werewolf,” she explains, reaching in for her. Kelsea doesn’t even stir. If Camden’s going to be a dick about all of this, then she’ll walk in that house and find whoever she needs to on her own. “She’s not changing, she’s not healing either.”

By the time she  gets Kelsea out of the car and into her arms, awaiting Camden’s response, he’s gone. She turns around and he’s walking, already halfway back to the house. The porch creaks ominously under his weight before he turns around.

“You coming, or not?”

Well, she did she was doing this, the matter way.

By the time she catches up to him, between shutting the door, carrying Kelsea, and wondering whether or not the porch is safe, Camden is already inside. He’s left the door open, although it’s not doing much good. There’s hardly any light coming from inside. She wasn’t particularly optimistic about the thought of electricity, or running water, but now she’s tossed it out the window.

“Watch where you’re putting your damn feet,” Camden says, and she looks down. Sure enough, there’s a hole in the hall nearly a foot long, pushed up against the wall. She can’t see anything below it but darkness.

“Don’t tell me people actually live here,” she says flatly, clutching tighter to Kelsea. The floor is creaking so loud between the two of them it sounds as if the whole house is about to come down around them. She wouldn’t know if it was about to – she can hardly make out Camden in front of her. There’s a very faint, almost non-existent light coming out from the next door, closed tight, and she can’t stare at it too long as they pass for fear of falling right through the floor.

“You’d be surprised.”

God, this is so fucked. There’s a hole in the wall to her right, wires spilling down and nearly touching the ground. There’s a candle flickering on the table at the end of the hall, another stuck in a holder on the ground by their feet. There’s another hole there, bigger than the last. She’d have walked right into it if not for the light. The breeze as they go by sends it flickering wildly, the shadows around it growing and shrinking, scattering her own shadow along the floor into pieces.

People cannot possibly live here. There’s no electricity, no way to sustain even a single person. It feels like someone’s watching her but nothing’s there when she glances over her shoulder. There’s a single, itching crawl creeping up her spine, like something’s a hair away from touching her.

Camden pulls open a door she hadn’t even seen

She doesn’t even see the door , nestled back into the wall, further away than anything else. Camden pulls it open and even though the light isn’t bright, she still squints up at the bulb. It doesn’t look promising.

“There’s no electricity on this entire block.”

“You’re absolutely correct.”

There’s more light coming from down the stairs, too. There’s a lot of them, and another door that won’t allow her to see much else. A faint noise is there too, almost like a buzzing. Just loud enough that it’s incessant at the edge of her ear, not easy to ignore. Camden starts down the stairs without an apparent care in the world, but she pauses.

This is dumb. Of  _ course _  it’s dumb, because Blair was the one who told her to come here. Him and his ever-reliable information, about the weirdest things in the world.

There should’ve been another way to fix this, besides the stupidest one.

“How many people have died in that basement?”

“Not as many as you’d think.”

“More than I’d like.”

“Also correct,” Camden agrees. He shoulders the door open – it sticks in it’s frame like it’s determined to keep whatever’s on the other side in. Or maybe it just doesn’t want her coming through.

She doesn’t want to either. Her and the door are on the same side here.

“You  wanna  stay up there, fine,” Camden says. “Have fun dealing with Isi and her nightly bullshit.”

She also doesn’t even want to know what the hell that means. And that of all things outweighs the worry she feels about going into the basement of no return with Kelsea in her arms. She’ll be fine, of course. And if she makes this choice Kelsea will be too. Probably, anyway. She’ll be able to call Blair later and tell him that everything went according to plan, and then she’ll go back to Portland and find Vance, and this will all be fine. Like nothing ever went wrong in the first place.

Like she said. Probably.

They’ve got a lot of things weighing on probable’s, these days.

—

—

— August 22 nd , 2018.

The thing about werewolves is they work entirely in cycles.

Vance wishes someone would have told him that from the get-go.

You live one month to the next. Change, live for the next thirty days, rinse repeat. Nothing you ever do in those days prepares you for it or changes the ultimate outcome. It will still happen, regardless of if you want it to or not. The nightmare will always comes back.

He blacks out in that same spot, claws stuck in his chest, bleeding into the dirt. Wakes up. Moves five feet, before he blacks out again. He doesn’t know what day he finally makes it to that building, further away than he thought, but it’s small, the door won’t open, and he can’t gather the strength  to break one of the windows.

His only option at that point is keep walking.

Somewhere along that way, the wounds in his chest get a little bit smaller. He walks like a zombie, unthinkingly, back to the storage units. When he looks up the orange nearly blinds him, like a sunset, like all the blood on the ground, and he nearly throws up on the sidewalk.

The door to the unit is dented in at the bottom, but it’s closed. His backpack is still there, tucked into the corner. He can smell all the blood, and the ash. He doesn’t so much kneel down to grab at it as he falls. It doesn’t even feel like he remembers how to use his hands anymore, but he struggles into the extra set of clothes in there and sits limply on the ground, staring at the weeds growing up through the cracks. At the flaking blood underneath his nails.

He knows. He doesn’t know.

He bleeds through the shirt sometime in the next twelve hours, and even though his wallet is in the backpack he doesn’t think he can just walk into the nearest Walmart without terrifying half of its patrons to buy a new one.

There’s no way he’s struggling his way back to the motel, either. Without knowing what he did he knows it’s bad. He can’t look it in the face. He’ll collapse. He can’t handle knowing something awful happened because of him, knowing that the same exact thing could happen in however many days he has until the next full moon.

If he ever gets back. He very well might die, before that day ever comes.

When he starts walking again, realizing in a delayed sort of sense exactly where he’s going, he almost starts laughing. His sweater’s missing, and his phone – Kelsea’s doing. There’s really no way to cover himself up, but it’s getting late. He shrugs the backpack off and hugs it close to his chest, before he gently nudges the door to the animal shelter open.

Nothing about it has changed. The  woman  at the front desk glances up at him for a second, searching, before she goes back to her paperwork, satisfied at his half-smile and nearly covered appearance. He looks normal enough.  Besides, he knows exactly where he’s going anyway, the one place that might actually make him feel better right about now.

That nearly non-existent puppy is still there in it’s cage along the wall. Kelsea had spent so long sitting in front of it, coaxing it to her, until it had fallen asleep with it’s head up against the fencing, leaning against her hand. It’s small, looks breakable. He knows all about what that feels like right now.

It leans its head over the edge of the bed and looks right at him, before it lets out a sigh that seems too big for his body.

It’s pretty relatable.

“Funny, he usually hides when people look at him.”

He turns, just the slightest bit, so that he can see the employee talking to him instead of outright ignoring her. She’s not really looking at him anyway, just sorting stuff around in one of the empty cages.

“We were in here a few days ago,” he says, and winces at how bad his voice sounds. “He seemed to really like my friend.”

“That’s weird. He was the runt. Got bullied a lot. Think that’s why no one’s taken him, he hasn’t really interacted with anyone that’s come to see him.”

That’s relatable as well, honestly. This girl is the first person Vance is interacted with in god knows how many days that isn’t a dog, and he still wants to run away. He’s just waiting for her to look at him the wrong way, to realize something’s up with him. The dog’s looking at him right now anyway, or maybe he’s just losing it, if he thinks this little puppy is looking at him suspiciously.

He glances over his shoulder again, and now she  _ is  _ staring at him. His first instinct is to send his own gaze away, as quickly as he can manage, but it feels like he has no reflexes. He didn’t think it was possible, but she looks even more exhausted than he feels.

Or maybe she’s figured something out.  Realizing who he is.

He takes a deep breath. “How much to take him?”

Whatever she was about to say, whatever thought she just had, completely vanishes.

That was his goal.

—

—

—

So, Vance’s cycle is broken by a dog.

That may top the charts, for most ironic thing to ever happen in his entire life.

He’s still not even sure how he pulls it off. The girl spends twenty minutes grilling him, asking him all sorts of questions, and each time he nearly panics. He has to give them an address, and lists Emmett’s address before he nearly has a heart attack at the front desk.

The other lady, the older one, looks surprised that he even has the money. The dog, and all the other things they’re selling him, is a lot more money than anyone involved in this transaction was planning on spending. But he has no obligations. No college to go back to, in a few weeks. Nothing else to use it on.

If he’s ever going back to a home now, to the people that were trying to take care of him, then this is the only way he’s going back.

So now Vance has a very tiny little dog sitting between his feet, on a leash that seems far too long for it, signing paperwork under a name that’s almost his but not quite, making up every single thing in the book in order to get out of the building in one piece, dog in tow.

And to be fair, about all of this, it’s not exactly his fault when that doesn’t happen.

The place is about to close, when he makes it back to the front door. He bends down gingerly to scoop the thing up, unsure of it’s status with stairs twice the size of it. The girl walks him nearly the whole way there, and he probably needs to say some sort of goodbye to her. Thank her for something. For falling for his bullshit, at least.

People running into any type of establishment five minutes before closing time are the worst kind of people. Vance knows this. Everyone in the world knows it. That doesn’t stop a very harrowed middle-aged woman from barging in like she owns the place. For what reason, Vance isn’t sure. And he wasn’t going to ask, either.

The issue is, she doesn’t seem to care that  he’s standing there, so when the edge of the door flies in and catches him square in the chest, he nearly collapses.

His vision actually goes white and nearly fades right around the edges, at how quickly the pain returns. His chest has been hurting for days, a dull throb always lurking around. To fully heal he needs to be eating and sleeping consistently, needs to be in a good state of mind. He wasn’t. He was working on it. He wasn’t bleeding anymore. That had to count for something, in the long run, because he was on the very slow path to fixing it.

Not anymore.

The woman breezes right past him, down the hall, towards the front desk. He feels something tear open. Feels the blood start up again, hot down his chest, and forces himself not to collapse under the pain.

Someone touches his arm.

That’s not great.

That girl’s still there. Right.

“That lady’s awful,” she says, with a frown. “And she’s never actually adopted anything either. Why bother?”

He wants to do something. Say something. He gives a terse nod, clenching his jaw. The puppy is thankfully keeping very still in the crook of his elbow, like he’s realized he’s not supposed to be drawing attention to the issue that is the blood gushing renewed down his chest.

He really needs to get out of this building.

She lets go of his arm and reaches for the door. He can’t stop her. She takes a step in front of him to do so, pulling it open to let him out, and turns back to him.

He knows what she’s about to see, but her face is worse.

She actually  _ gasps, a _  sharp little inhale. The expected reaction, to someone bleeding in the entryway of a building, someone who just walked in here and adopted a little dog like he was a completely normal, sane person.

“Jesus,” she says. “God, are you okay – how much are you bleeding?”

A lot. She can probably tell that, so it seems like a dumb question to ask, but Vance is pretty much the pinnacle for dumb at this point, so who’s he to judge?

He tries to take a step back, and his knee quakes. She locks her hand around his arm, and he has to focus on the feeling of it just to keep himself upright. If he collapses here, it’s game over. Everything is done for him right here.

“I’m  gonna  call 911, alright?” she says. “It’s okay — ”

“Don’t,” he chokes out. “God, please don’t — ”

She calls 911. He gets taken to the hospital. They find out who he is. His parents show up. He kills his parents next full moon. Or worse than that.

“You can let her help you.”

He flinches at the new voice. That’s a male voice. Definitely not her. Definitely not  _ anyone in the fucking  _ _ vicinity _ , because there’s no one else here. He looks around so fast everything spins, but there’s no one there.

For one long, hysterical moment, he looks down at the dog.

If the fucking dog is talking to him right now, he’s already done.

It’s just looking at him. It licks his hand, like that’s supposed to be comforting. He really hopes it’s not the dog talking to him. If that’s the case, he’s putting it back.

“Let her help you,” the voice repeats again. He’s officially lost it and has plunged off the deep end. There’s no one else here. If there was, she’d be looking at them too, talking more. Someone else would be helping.

He takes a deep breath, makes himself breath until everything snaps back into focus. Her in front of him, holding onto his arm. Making sure he doesn’t go down. The door and everything beyond it. He just needs to make it to the trees. She’ll expect that he has a car, that he’ll go for the road. If he can disappear into the woods, even if he only makes it a few feet, they’re not going to find him.

“Okay,” he agrees, voice, shaking.

“Okay,” she echoes. “Just stay here, don’t move. I’m just  gonna  go to the desk and get the phone.”

She lets go of him, and it takes all of his focus to stay upright. He watches her disappear down the hall, yelling off to whoever the other woman is. Something about the phone, and getting a towel. He takes another deep breath, presumably the last one he’s going to be able to get down. That voice is still echoing around, let her help you,  _ let her help you _ —

She just did, technically.

He lunges for the door, and disappears.

He’s in the woods before she gets back.

—

—

— August 23 rd , 2018.

The pain isn’t gone.

The pain isn’t gone, but it feels faint as a whisper.

Kelsea opens her eyes and for a minute fears that she’s gone blind. Everything is black, like someone’s pulled her into the deepest trench in the ocean, or like she’s floating in space. It’s like nothing exists except for the shadows.

It takes a long few minutes before she can make out much of anything, and even then it’s not much. The lone bulb above the door on the far wall isn’t doing much, and every so often it will flicker. The few candles aren’t showing her the surroundings at all – they’re all perched on long, wooden tables lined up against the wall. She can see their reflection back on other things – lots of glass, a few bits of metal. She reaches down and feels something scratchy, but still soft. A bed, then, a little cot tucked away into the corner.

Her arm moves, though. It’s stiff, and sore, and throbs when she pulls it up to inspect it in the half-light. It’s covered in a thick white swath of bandages, clean and done with an expert hand. Not Nadir’s slight frantic pull and wind. This was all someone else.

There’s a slight reflection of blue – bright and vivid, against one of the glass containers. She turns her head to the side to see a shadow, a person. Their eyes are glowing, abnormally. Like Vance’s but blue, amplified like someone did something to them, candlelight golden against a slick of blonde hair.

She bolts upright and everything spins. By the time her vision rights itself again the person is gone, and she hears the tight slam of a door, but doesn’t even see it. She throws her legs over the edge to touch the ground. Her feet are bare, and the floor is ice cold. Everything  _ does  _ feel a little bit amplified. The floor creaks directly over her head and shakes, traveling all the way across the building above her until it stops.

She was in the car, talking to Blair. At some point she had given the phone back to Nadir.

But after that? She’s got nothing.

Kelsea wanders to the door that she can still hardly make out, but it doesn’t budge. Whoever disappeared behind it, she feels, is probably long gone by now. The other door must lead upstairs. There’s no other way out. She rests her hand on the knob, testing, and lets out a breath of relief when it pushes open, revealing stairs up. Letting in that light shows a bit more of the room – it almost looks like someone made a laboratory five hundred years ago and has managed to maintain it up until this point. There’s no way.

The creaking starts up against when she’s nearly done ascending the stairs and she pauses by the door, listening. There’s at least one distinctly male voice out there, possibly two. She’s certain there’s another one, lurking around downstairs. No sign of Nadir, though.

And she’s got zero clue where she is, what she’s supposed to do, or what the hell happened to her.

She darts out into the hallway, silent as a mouse, and nearly goes crashing into a hole in the hallway. If only she could fly, really fly like the ones older than her. She’d be out of here in seconds, and no one would be able to catch her. For now she steadies her hands against the hall and glances around. She’s only in one small section, but it looks like a maze. There are hallways in every direction, and no clear exit. She can’t even see a window.

“I think that’s a very terrified little heartbeat I can hear,” a voice says, and she freezes. It sounded so loud, but there’s no one in sight. The ceilings are high – it could have echoed. There’s no way to tell.

She peers around the corner when the creaking starts up again, and holds her breath. Someone’s coming this way. Clearly someone in this place knows she’s up and walking.

Her bare foot brushes against something as she inches backward and she leans down to grab it. It’s a rough little chunk of wood, like a broken off sliver from a picture frame.

Like she was never going to be able to do anything with it.

By the time she rights herself there are a set of feet standing right in front of her, and she yelps without thinking, taking a large step back. The guy reaches forward and locks a hand around her wrist, and that’s the first real time her forearm starts to burn.

“Great try,” he deadpans. “Let go.”

_ Let go  _ – is he serious? He’s three times her size, and looks like he could toss her through the wall.

He squeezes so hard, though, that she has no choice. She fears her bones snapping in her wrists like twigs and lets the shard of wood fall to the ground. He releases her the second it lands between the feet, and she skitters backwards away from him—

And slams right into someone else.

She yelps again, is already getting tired of it, and something hot splashes against her back. Not enough to burn, not like the fever and the sleep from before, and whirls around. There’s  _ another  _ guy standing there, holding a very woefully empty cup full of whatever she just nearly knocked out of his hands. He’s staring down at the puddle of it on the ground with eyes full of disdain, before he very slowly  looks up at her.

For some very odd reason, she feels like ruining this guy’s drink was worse than trying to attack the other one.

The other one, though, is very quietly snickering behind the two of them without a care in the world. There’s another distinctive cackle too – louder and more wild, coming from somewhere further away, and it terrifies her.

“Fuck’s sake,” he says, clearly irritated, and stalks back the way he came. She wonders if irritated is just his permanent state of mind. It certainly looks it.

“Oh, that was sweet,” the other one says. “He interacts with two strangers for like, the first time this year and you both piss him off.”

_ Two _  strangers. “Where’s Nadir?”

He shrugs. “Fuck if I know. Go find her.”

In this labyrinth of a house? Is she even in the house to begin with? Surely she would have heard all of this noise by now, and come to investigate. Unless she left Kelsea alone in here with all of these unfamiliar people with no rhyme or reason for it. Her arm doesn’t hurt nearly as much, and she’s standing on her now. That’s a reason. But would Nadir abandon her?

“She’s outside!” someone yells. It sounds very far away again, but this time it’s a more feminine voice, and Kelsea glances around for the source of it. Clearly she’s not getting very far with this one, and the other who’s drink she just spilled.

“If you’re thinking what I think you are, I wouldn’t,” he says, a growing smirk on his face. “Isi’s the last person in here you want to talk to.”

What happens next is almost like what happens with Rooke, when he suddenly vanishes or appears next to you. There’s that icy little chill, the sudden heart-stopping moment when a presence that wasn’t originally next to you suddenly is.

But she sees it. The hallway grows a little darker. He doesn’t look concerned at all, but her pulse must skyrocket, for how amused he looks. A second later there’s an actual shadow, like what she saw downstairs.

Two seconds later it’s a person.

She swallows the strangled yelp just in time.  There’s the girl - Isi. A girl who wasn’t anywhere near them a second ago, who materialized out of nothing but the darkness, and yet she still somehow looks like it.

“I can hear you, dick,” Isi snaps, and leans forward, presumably to hit him. He leaps out of the way and down the hall, laughing like a fiend. While she looks pissed there’s also something terrifying to the smirk on her face, at how awful it seems, like it’s growing larger by the second. She almost looks like she could be a ghost, skin white as death, eyes so light they’re nearly translucent blue. There’s nothing un-naturally  glowy  about her at all.

Kelsea’s eyes are glued to her neck, and she really does feel like she’s looking at Rooke all over again for the first time, except this is much, much worse.

There’s no mistaking the stitches in her neck for anything else – they’re thick and dark, like staples, and although her short hair can’t hide very much Kelsea can’t see all the way around. Her skin is smooth, paper-white until they get to that point, like someone drew a thick line all the way around her neck in sharpie and left it there. Like someone took her head off and someone else put it back on. There’s no way. There’s absolutely no way.

She grins again. Kelsea’s not sure, but it almost gets even wider.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

She doesn’t have even the slightest desire to do that, camera or not.

“ Kels !”

She nearly bursts into tears at the sound of Nadir’s voice, down the hall. She doesn’t even really look before she’s hurrying towards her, and then throws herself into her arms. Nadir doesn’t seem to mind – holding onto her the second she latches on.

“Careful, your arm.”

She doesn’t care about her arm, at the way it throbs again when she tangles a hand in Nadir’s shirt, making sure she’s not going to get more than a foot away without also taking her.

“You okay?”

She is, oddly enough. She forces herself to nod, despite how confused she is. Despite how little of all of this truly makes sense right now.

She turns back and Isi is still standing there, staring at the two of them. The smile on her face has faded, but the stitches haven’t. They’re still there, stark as ever, and Kelsea can’t tear her eyes off of them. The rest of the house around her, it’s ramshackle unsteady appearance, has all faded away.

Isi waggles her fingers at the both of them, half a goodbye, and then disappears into the faintest  whisp  of smoke.

Kelsea takes a deep breath. “Can we go?”

“Absolutely.”

—

—

—

Nadir doesn’t think she’ll ever say it to Kelsea, who’s even more terrified, that she’s never been so genuinely fearful of a place in her entire life.

The amount of  _ shit  _ she’s seen, the amount she’s lived and died through – it’s bad, for her to say that.

She puts Kelsea in the car, gets in the driver’s seat, and then locks all the doors. Kelsea wraps her arms around herself. The bandage around her arm is still pristine, clean all the way around. Nadir’s terrified, but she’s also grateful for that.

“Are you sure you feel okay?”

Kelsea pulls her eyes away from the window. “I do. I’m still a little shaky, and woozy but I – I think I’m fine. Should I be fine?”

Probably not. She wouldn’t be, if Nadir hadn’t taken her here. She’s no doctor, not a magical healer. Nothing that happened in that house was because of her. All she can do now is take her very far away from it, before anyone inside decides they’re going to try something else.

Kelsea scratches at the edge of the bandage, and then wiggles her toes. Nadir starts the car, uncaring for who’s shoes gets left behind.

“What did they do to me?” Kelsea asks, voice very small. “It doesn’t hurt that bad anymore.”

“Isi never touched you. Neither did Camden – the bigger guy. Shirin did everything, if you saw him. He stitched your arm back up and took care of it. It’s not healed, but it’s better than it was before.”

“But I was worse than that—”

“I know. That’s why I took you here. Blair met them, a few years back. He knew Shirin wasn’t human, but didn’t know what. Like Tanis, but not. He’s got some type of magic, something that allows him to heal certain things. Or  _ do  _ certain things. I didn’t really have time to ask the logistics of it, and he wasn’t going to tell me. He hardly spoke to me.”

“He’s like you,” Kelsea says quietly. “No one knows what he is.”

“The other two know what he is, guaranteed.”

“Three.”

“What?”

“Three. There was someone else in the basement, when I woke up.”

File that under things Nadir absolutely did not know, upon entering or leaving that house. Something she’s not sure she wanted to know, either. Kelsea gnaws on her lower lip and pulls her legs up to her chest. She does still look exhausted. A little woozy. Nadir steps on the gas a little harder, all the way back to the outskirts of Portland, and tries not to think about it too much.

Blair seemed certain that nothing bad was going to happen to Kelsea, for this, but he also doesn’t truly know. Shirin could have done anything to her, and none of them would be any the wiser.

But she can’t tell Kelsea that. She’s not sure she can tell anyone that.

By the time she pulls into the lot of the motel Kelsea looks half asleep but blinks a few times at the door to their room, eyebrows knitted together.

Nadir sits there and waits.

“Vance never came back, did he?” she whispers . “Or you left to take me there, and he came back and we were gone—”

“Hey,” she responds. “Don’t talk like that. We’re  gonna  find him, or he’s going to come back. We’ll fix all of this. We’ve already started.”

Kelsea nods, but her eyes look as if they’re filling with tears.

“Go inside, lay down,” Nadir says. “I’ll be in soon.”

Kelsea doesn’t respond, like she’s gone mute, and takes the key from Nadir’s hand mechanically, like she’s turned into a robot. Nadir watches her shuffle all the way to the door and inside, keeping her injured arm tucked close against her chest.

The clock ticked over past midnight sometime on the drive back and she stares at it for several minutes, watching it tick over again and again. She pulls out her phone and texts Blair:  _ Why do we always have a problem to deal with _ ?

She misses him. She misses Tanis. She misses all of them and the little bit of time she had with them when it felt like there was no stupid, endless bullshit to deal with. In those quiet summer afternoons when it felt like nothing bad would ever happen again.

_ Makes life more exciting _ , he answers six hours later, four hours into the middle of her sleep.

—

—

—August 26 th , 2018.

Vance is beginning to wonder if he’s ever felt this exhausted in his life.

This has nothing, on pulling an all-nighter to cram for an exam. It feels like he’s been cramming for ten different exams and retained absolutely none of the information. It feels, almost, like someone’s sucking his brain out of his head with a straw.

A feeling he never though he would come to recognize, if he’s being honest.

His feet take him back to the motel, not his near non-existent brain. His chest is still open, even though it’s not bleeding anymore. He’s got a very concerned and mighty attached little puppy living out of his backpack, in a nest of half his available wardrobe.

He nearly collapses face-first in front of their rental car, right there on the sidewalk and almost considers wrenching the door open to it before he ever willingly goes back inside the room.

He has the spare key too, in his wallet. One quiet click and he could be in.

But he can’t go in.

He can smell everything. The blood. The lingering infection. The sharp, bitter tang of fear and panic and anxiety lingering in the air, like a cold sweat.  Can almost taste the blood in the back of his throat all over again,  _ Kelsea’s  _ blood, after he ripped her arm to shreds and very nearly killed her.

He  kinda  does collapse on the sidewalk, awkwardly sliding down the wall until he hits the ground with a thump. He pulls the backpack off and brings it up against his chest to peer in through the few inches of open zipper – the puppy is still fast asleep in there, not able to give a shit at Vance’s current emotions. With how much Vance has put the poor creature through in the past few days, he can’t say he blames him.  To be honest, he’s quite shocked the thing didn’t flee on him sometime after he got out of the shelter, laying in the dirt and struggling to fi ght  off the approaching blackness at the edge of his vision.

His head thuds back against the brick wall, and he watches a car whiz by. All the street-lights blink on a few moments later, a suddenly harsh glare against his already-tired eyes.

The footsteps suddenly moving towards the door are loud, when everything else is so quiet, and although Vance almost wants to go tearing off in the opposite direction he doesn’t think he’d be quick enough. He slumps back against the wall even further, hugging the bag against his chest. It won’t do any good as a shield.

His whole body locks tight when Nadir opens the door, like she could sense him there, and he takes a few seconds, a few deep inhales and exhales, before he lifts his head up to look at her.

She’s a little bit fuzzy around the edges – hopefully that’s his vision, and not her. She doesn’t look as shocked as he would reckon. A little angry. Understandable, after what he’s done. He blinks up at her, and the longer the two of them go in silence the more her face turns down, encroaching sadness.

“I’m sorry,” he says hoarsely.

He can’t even look at her. It feels like he’s going to cry. As soon as he looks down, focusing on the edges of his extremely filthy shoes , she crouches by his side. A hand squeezes his arm, travels up to his shoulder, and the past two weeks of terror finally breaks free from his chest. His chest that’s still open and aching, though Nadir hasn’t noticed that yet, by some miracle. He doesn’t want to let go of the bag, doesn’t want to let her see how much of a fuck up he really is, not when she already knows it so deeply.

“Take it easy,” she says. “It’s okay—”

“It’s not,” he chokes out. “It’s not, I hurt her, I—”

“It’s okay,” she repeats. “Listen to me, alright? Kelsea’s fine. I took her somewhere, got her fixed up. It was rough in the beginning but she’s good now. I just  wanna  know that you’re okay too.”

He shakes his head, and the tears go spinning wildly away. He doesn’t know how to handle this, can’t wrap his brain around the fact that he’s just hurting everything, fucking everything good up when absolutely no one needs it.

She reaches for the backpack, presumably to tug it away from him , and he’s too slow to react, to realize exactly why that’s so bad. She pulls it free from his arms, frowning at the weight of it before she peers in—

“You fucking did not.”

He stares at her. The tears slow, and then almost stop.

“Vance, you are not serious.”

“I paid for him,” he says weakly, like that makes any of this better. “I swear.”

“Not exactly the point I was trying to make. We don’t even have a home right now, and now you have a dog?”

“Well, I was mostly getting him for Kelsea, but now I think he’s slightly attached to me.”

Nadir stares into the bag, like that’ll make it go away, before she reaches in. She pulls the puppy out carefully, cradled between both of her hands, wrapped in one of Vance’s extra shirts. It doesn’t even open it’s eyes, fast asleep, lulled into it by Vance’s constant stumbling around.

“We have a dog now,” Nadir says flatly. “ Dimara’s  going to kill us.”

“Does she know?”

“No.”

“Who knows?”

“Just us three, and Blair. He told me where to take Kelsea.”

Having Blair know isn’t really all that concerning. But everyone else will know, eventually. Kelsea may be getting better but she’s always going to have all that scarring. Someone will ask. Someone will figure it out, long before that.

Nadir drops his backpack just inside the door and then rises to her feet, still with the puppy tucked against her chest. “C’mon. Up.”

He clutches onto her arm, using it as an anchor as he pulls himself up next to her, wobbling alarmingly. She herds him into the room, and then gently in the direction of the bathroom before she lets go of him. He keeps his eyes dutifully on the ground, catching only one lone glimpse of Kelsea fast asleep in the far bed before he looks away, trying to rid the scene of a long-died out infection from his nose.

He hobbles into the bathroom like he’s alternating between working legs, and winces at the light when he flicks it on. What’s even worse is  the reflection looking back at him in the mirror. He doesn’t even look like himself. He looks more like someone who has been hit head on by a truck than a living, breathing person.

And it’s so bright in here, too, that he can hardly keep his eyes open. He squints, nearly closing his eyes altogether, reaching for his chest. His shirt is stuck again, the ribbons of fabric dried through with blood again, clinging stubbornly to his skin, and he works at pulling them free.

“You’re going to hurt yourself.”

He flinches. Not Nadir’s voice. Still not a voice he recognizes, that same one from back at the shelter. He jolts again when Nadir’s hand lands on his arm, even though he can hardly make out her reflection in the mirror.

“Jesus Christ, what did that to you?”

“I did.”

She’s pulled his hand away, enough to get a good look, and he doesn’t care enough anymore to stop her. It fucking hurts. He wishes it would stop. She looks up at him scrutinizing, but there’s no judgement. In fact, he almost wonders if he’s imagining it, that little bit of understanding in her eyes.

“Pain’s a good distraction from the bad things,” the voice says, and he lets his eyes open fully, looking around even though he knows nothing’s there. Nadir’s let go of him, searching for the first-aid kit, and he grabs onto the edge of the countertop, looking for something to hold onto instead. He’s still holding onto it when he backs up, sitting gingerly on the edge of the tub.

The door’s still open. He can see out of, just a little bit.

Nadir kicks it closed, and looks at him. 

“Can you hear another voice?” he blurts out.

“I can hear  _ your _  voice. Should I be hearing another voice?”

Well, he doesn’t know how to answer that one. All the things that he can think of sound ridiculously stupid, or something to raise concern  over . Nadir has enough of that, right now.

He might be going crazy. He probably is.

“I think I might just be dead,” he answers instead, simply and she huffs, crouching down in front of him.

“Join the club.”

Well. At least he’s not the only one.

—

—

—

There’s a very warm little weight nudged up against the backs of her legs, when Kelsea wakes up.

The motel bed is actually a stunning comfort, after waking up in that basement. She’s still been sleeping a lot, but not in the pain-induced haze that she was before. Not because her body was at war with itself, trying to stop such an unnatural change from taking over.

She shifts, curling and uncurling her toes, and the weight against the back of her legs  _ moves _ .

She sits up a bit, twisting so that she can see behind her. The puppy fast asleep, or nearly, in the crook of her knee is the exact same one from the shelter, the one that finally warmed up to her near the end. It twists against, dropping its head over her calf, and blinks at her once before it’s eyes are closed again, fast asleep.

She may have lost several days, but she doesn’t remember the re  being a dog here, when they got back.

Nadir’s nowhere in sight. The bathroom door is closed tight, white light spilling out from underneath. There’s a backpack right next to the door, caked over in grime and a color so dark it almost looks like blood.

Vance.

The puppy clambers up over her leg when she lays a hand over it’s head, scratching over it’s ears, and wiggles up to lay against her chest, huddling into a ball so tiny it nearly disappears into the blankets. She nearly covers it with her palm, the rise and fall of it’s chest so miniscule it hardly feels like it’s breathing at all.

She can hear nothing from the bathroom, save for the occasional murmur, and the squeak of something against the tiled floor.

It has to be him. His backpack’s here, and now the dog.

A very small part of her wishes she had the super senses that so many other people do. She wishes she could hear them, to understand what happened out there. She can imagine how terrified Vance was, how scared he must still be. Of himself, of what she thinks of him.

She lays her head back down . She doesn’t think there’s a single thing he could do out in the world that could make her hate him. There’s things that all of the others have done. Some horrible, some not. That doesn’t make them bad people. Doesn’t mean that they would ever intentionally hurt her. That’s not who they are.

She just has to make sure Vance understands that.

But it’s not going to happen right now. She’s not stupid. She closes her eyes and curls a hand around the little puppy, grateful for the non-existent pain in her arm, and this little gift, and the fact that he’s back and none of them are going anywhere, now.

—

—

—September 2 nd , 2018.

Nadir’s felt a lot of frustration over the years.

Frustration at the world, and the things it did. Frustration at loss, and love, and all sorts of people, ones from a distance and ones that got too close.

Very few of those instances actually compare to the frustration she feels now.

She gets where both of them are coming from. Vance is terrified to even look in Kelsea’s direction, and that’s all Kelsea wants him to know. If Kelsea wakes up, Vance fakes sleep until she succumbs to it again. If she’s properly up Vance goes for a walk, as reluctant as Nadir is to let him do it. Sometimes he takes the dog. Usually he doesn’t. The thing’s already following Kelsea around like it was meant to never leave her side.

And unfortunately for her, she’s the mediator.

She has no idea how to be the mediator.

But now she’s on her third night in a row of Vance kicking her awake at three in the morning, restless and anxious even in sleep, and she’s had enough of it.

He wakes up. Goes to the bathroom and shoves two granola bars down before either of them have even moved. She listens to him fill the dog’s bowl up, hears the little thing fling itself across the room in its haste to get there.

She sits up. Kelsea moves.

Vance doesn’t quite come sprinting back towards the bed, but it’s close.

Nadir flops over as much of the bed as she possibly can. It’s not all of it, but not nearly enough for Vance to be able to lay down and successfully feign sleep. He stops, looking down at her confusion.

Across the room, Kelsea’s eyes open.

Well. It might be a success.

Vance doesn’t have to turn around to know that she’s awake. He tenses, shoulders going stuff, and looks down at Nadir, practically begging her with his eyes. He’s half-dressed – no way he’s getting outside for a walk before Kelsea’s on him. He looks like he’s about to sit on her.

“Fuck you,” she announces, and he frowns.

“That’s harsh,” Kelsea says quietly. Vance turns around to look at her, a careful glance, and she smiles hesitantly.

Much to her surprise, though, neither of them move. She rolls over onto her stomach to watch the two of them, like some sort of spectacle. It’s nerve-wracking. Nadir gets that. She just wants to go back to before, what’s the tension to fade away. If it can.

She rolls her eyes and leans forward to grab Vance’s arm, tugging him onto the bed. He sprawls out next to her, a muffled noise of surprise uttered into the blankets, and she pats the opposite side, where neither of them have occupied.

“ Kels , get over here.”

Apparently you don’t have to ask her twice. She scrambles out of her own bed, moving freely, and moves onto the bed to complete their little triangle, crossing her legs in-between them.

“Okay, I’ll start, because I’m apparently the group therapist,” Nadir says. “Vance, Kelsea doesn’t hate you. Accept it. Kelsea, I think you’re freaking him out with all the staring and expectations. He hurt you. We know that, we were unfortunately all there. And while that’s  _ awful _ __ I think we can all agree that it will be even more awful if everything continues on like this.”

Kelsea nods. Vance picks up the edge of the blanket between his fingers and picks at it, glancing up warily at the two of them.

“I don’t hate you,” Kelsea says quietly. “I don’t want you to think that.”

“I know that,” Vance says tersely. “I just—fuck, I don’t get why you don’t. It would be easier to understand if you did.”

“That wasn’t  _ you _  though,” Kelsea insists. “We both know it wasn’t you. You hardly even remember doing it—”

“But I do,” he interrupts. “Now that I’m back here, I do. I remember how terrified you look. I remember some part of my brain just not caring. I would’ve killed you, if Nadir hadn’t been there .”

“I don’t think you would have. ”

“ Kels —”

“I’m serious,” she insists. “I don’t think you would have. You’re still in there, somewhere. See, this right now, you didn’t want to hurt me. I know you didn’t. And you regret it and you hate yourself now and I don’t want you to hate yourself. Not because I was dumb enough to open the door.”

They both almost look like they want to cry. That wasn’t entirely Nadir’s goal, but at this point, she’ll be glad for any emotion that decides to come pouring out between the two of them.

“You’re not dumb,” Vance says quietly, some moments later.

“No, she is,” Nadir counters, and Kelsea snorts. She is absolutely convinced that they’re all dumb, though, somewhere deep down. Kelsea’s example just came at a particularly terrible time.

“I don’t know how to handle any of this,” she continues. “I’m garbage at dealing with any of this, and Kelsea’s stupid, and you lose your shit once a month, minimum. That’s our life.”

“I think you’re better than you think,” Kelsea argues, and smiles. If Nadir’s better at this than she believes, then maybe this isn’t the end all be all, for them. Maybe Kelsea’s decision was a one time fluke. Maybe this time, things will be different.

“Okay, moving on,” Kelsea announce, and then all but flings herself at Vance. It almost looks like she’s about to strangle him, arms locked tight around his neck, refusing to let go. He flails around, looking for an escape route. Nadir’s certainly not helping him with one, and waits until he hugs her back to be truly satisfied.

“Just think,” Kelsea mumbles into his shoulder. “I’ll have this badass scar now. You guys all look so scary and intimidating and now I’ll finally match.”

“I didn’t know Rooke was scary  _ or  _ intimidating,” Vance says flatly, which is a cover up at best, but Nadir’s frankly inclined to agree with that.

“Plus, you got me a dog!” Kelsea exclaims. “Who could stay mad at that?”

Said dog must think  it’s  name is dog, because no one’s called it anything but. It comes running up to the side of the bed, and goes completely still when Nadir lifts it up, depositing it on the bed between them. It goes charging over to the two of them, paws scrabbling frantically at Kelsea’s back, and she laughs, letting go of Vance with one hand to reach for it.

Yeah, Kelsea’s probably got a point. Really, who could stay mad at that?

—

—

—September  7 th , 2018.

Vance sleeps through the night, for the first time.

Kelsea’s hogging all the blankets, no surprise there, but he’s warm enough most days that he doesn’t need them anyway. She’s rolled all the way away from him, probably trying to escape the heat, and the dog’s gone with her. Every once in a while it will lift it’s little head up, searching Vance out in the dark, and then go to sleep once he finds him, satisfied.

He can see so well in the dark it’s almost terrifying. Every miniscule moment is like the entire world shaking. The sun must be rising, or up, but the curtains are pulled so tight to the wall that there’s hardly any light seeping in. Both of them are still asleep anyway, and he doesn’t really think he’s ever been a morning creature, especially not now.

He finally feels safe again, just in time for it to get ruined. He doesn’t want to think about that, though. He’s not hungry or dehydrated. He slept all the way through, undisturbed by nightmares or shadows moving around him, pulling him back into the world of the living.

He puts a hand against his chest and knows without looking that the holes there, previously deep, ridged trenches, are gone. They were nothing but a sliver last night, like a cat scratch, angry little red lines almost faded to nothingness.

His hand presses harder, pulse thundering against his palm, and nothing hurts.

It’s a relief to think that.

—

—

—September 14 th , 2018.

“Promise me there will be no opening of doors.”

Kelsea looks up at Vance. “Pinky promise.”

He looks terrified. Again. She can’t say she blames him. He spent several hours today trying to convince her to stay in the motel room, but it was never going to work. They left the dog, but nothing else. It’s the same set-up as last time.

The bottom of the door is warped and dented, but no one points it out.

Nadir changed her bandages this morning and cut through all the stitches. It’s the first time that Vance had actually sat in the bathroom with them when they had changed them. Even though it hadn’t hurt, except for the occasional tug or pull against her skin, Kelsea had still reached forward and grabbed onto his hand. It felt more like she was comforting him, than he was comforting her.

They hadn’t spoken a word that whole time, until Nadir had announced that she was done. Vance had gone for a little walk after that, after his hands no longer had a use, just a few laps around the building before he came back  like he had never left.

They’re doing okay. Or they were anyway.

Kelsea smiles at him before they slide the door all the way down, before Nadir locks it and pockets the key, keeping it out of reach.

Together they trudge back to the car in silence. That’s their agreement. Sit in there, safe, until the sun rises. Until noon, if it comes to that. They’re not to open the door until Vance responds to them – that’s what he wants. She doesn’t want to leave him in there that long, but she likes his peace of mind more.

Nadir locks the car doors, too. Kelsea doesn’t think a car door would stop a wolf, if it really wanted in.

“What do you think everyone else has been up to, this whole time?”

“Hopefully nothing as eventful as this,” Nadir mutters. Kelsea supposes they’ll find out soon anyway, once they all meet back up. She hopes it’s as Nadir says, and that this was the worst of it.

It has to be.

She dozes on and off in the front seat of the car. Nadir will occasionally re-start it, to crank up the air conditioning or to charge her phone a bit, keeping watch on the time.  Kelsea can’t convince herself to do the same . It seems like every minute is passing at a virtual crawl, each one slower than the last. It almost feels like it’s never going to end.

A howl shatters the deathly quiet the two of them have ever so gracefully laid themselves in the middle of, and she sits up. It starts up again, longer and more drawn out. Closer.

“Is that him?” she asks blearily. He’s never done it before. She heard the pack howling, when they had come close back in June. It had sounded like an entire orchestra, strong enough to bring the trees down around them.

“It wouldn’t be that loud,” Nadir murmurs, glancing out the window.

“If he got out—”

The howl again. The door was slightly damaged, from the first time. If Vance was determined and fully changed, it could be possible.

Nadir reaches for the door, possibly to get out herself, and freezes. Kelsea’s wise enough to sit back against the seat, staring after her.

“Don’t move,” Nadir says. Kelsea stops breathing, sucking in all the  breath  the car has to offer, and glances up at the  rearview  mirror. She can see nothing, for a long minute, until a pair of loping, reddish-brown legs, casting long shadows along the concrete. Like a fox but six times the size. Definitely a wolf, nose pressed to the ground .

“That’s not him,” she gets out, and Nadir shakes her head. Vance is a hair smaller, and darker. Still those same golden eyes, ones that look up at her like they’re meeting in the reflection of the mirror.

They’re not safe in here. A locked door clearly won’t do anything, not against something that size. If it came creeping out of the woods on his own then it’s alone, and it wouldn’t be approaching people if it wasn’t new, confused and malicious in the same way Vance is.

“Okay, here’s what we’re  gonna  do,” Nadir says, hardly audible. “I’m  gonna  get out and distract it. Take off for the back of the complex – the fence should be able to reach the roof. Get up there, don’t come back down.”

“No.”

“Kelsea—”

“No,” she repeats. There’s no way she’s leaving Nadir down here with it. There’s nowhere safe. The car’s definitely not.

And it can hear them. It’s creeping closer, head cocked in curiosity, ears moving every which way trying to pin-point it. That, or it’s focusing on the sound of their fragile, fluttering heartbeats in their throats, wondering which angle will be best for it to start ripping  at.

The wolf is the first one of them all to turn, head swiveling around lightning fast. Kelsea doesn’t even hear it until a few seconds later – a steady clang, thumping that sounds like the consistent beat of a heavy drum, over and over again.

“The fucking door,” Nadir hisses. This can’t be happening now. There’s a wolf between them and Vance, another wolf who is standing in the way of  _ their  _ wolf, and judging by the noise theirs is pretty close to getting out. It’s silent, now. He could already be out.

Nadir grabs her arm, her nails digging in against Kelsea’s skin. “We’re both going to run.”

She nods, feeling her heart clench in her chest. The wolf is still looking the opposite way. There’s no way he’s not out, she knows it. Its ears flatten to its head, the beginnings of a feral snarl building in it’s throat at the threat of a new arrival. They’re already volatile, and the moon is making  i t worse. They’re unfamiliar. Enemies.

“Go,” Nadir tells her.

Kelsea doesn’t think. She just flings open the door, the noise not managing to conceal the sudden awfulness behind the car, the collision – she only opens her eyes once both her feet are firmly on the ground, and just in time, too. Both wolves go sailing past her, tangled so closely together that someone else might not be able to tell the difference, but she can. It seems ridiculous, that last time  when  she didn’t know whether it was Vance or just a wolf.

There’s a definite difference now.

Both of them hit the ground and spring apart, two sets of whirling claws and gleaming golden eyes and so many teeth, how did she possibly forget about those?

Kelsea’s forced to skid to a stop with Nadir behind her, the two of them in their clear path to the fence. Facing off like two completely wild animals, two things alone in the middle of such a vast world. She can’t tell which one of them looks more terrifying. Getting a good look at Vance now is worse than only having half a memory of it. It’s hard to reconcile who she knows with what this is, with how violently he threw himself into their path.

They collide again. She doesn’t know who moves first. She goes to sprint past them, dead set on finding a route out, and they  roll  back towards the car. Nadir grabs her arm and all but flings her away, and she goes rolling across the concrete and half into the grass at the edge of the lot, nearly under the back of the car.

The fire nearly blinds her – fire, and a terrifying loud, harsh squeal of pain, and then the ground beneath her is shaking so hard she wonders if her terror has finally brought an earthquake down upon them all.

That odd, little pained whimper recedes, as do the thundering footsteps. One of them retreated. She can’t tell who, but knows all the same.

“ Kels , don’t move.”

She doesn’t. She curls even tighter into herself, face pressed into the grass, and squeezes her eyes shut. If Nadir interfered after getting her out of the way, if the wolves got close enough that the unfamiliar went right past her…

Vance is probably between them.

Vance is between them, and still a wolf, and Kelsea should’ve just let him rip her arm off, if that’s the case. It would give him one less thing to lunge for now. She hears the grating sound of nails, scraping against the lot. Slowly but surely getting closer to her.

Of course he’s not going for Nadir. Why would he, when he’s already got the taste of  _ her _  blood in his memory?

Kelsea doesn’t know if screaming would help , or if there’s anything that can. She can’t tell where Nadir is, but she’s not doing anything. Maybe she doesn’t want to hurt Vance, and Kelsea doesn’t want her to either. Vance has been hurt enough.

She can  _ feel  _ the looming presence standing over her, can only imagine that to him she looks like a little mouse, cowering in the grass. A hot exhale drifts over the back of her neck, unsettles the hair tucked behind her ears. A second later something presses against the back of her shoulder, insistent but somehow gentle at the same time.

Kelsea should be dead, with how little she’s breathed in the past few minutes.

The pressure continues, disappearing every few seconds before it returns to push at her again. Down her arm all the way to her hand, before a very wet nose nudges at her fingers.

“She’s not hurt,” Nadir says, and Kelsea’s confused before she realizes.  _ She’s talking to Vance. _

Nadir’s still standing, clearly, and Vance has a good look at her. She’s the one lying completely limp on the ground like someone smacked her in the head, like she can’t move at all. Vance’s brain doesn’t recognize that. Maybe it does – they’re no experts in the concerns of wolves here.

But Vance is concerned.

“She’s okay, buddy,” Nadir says, and the nose disappears. She can only guess he’s looking back at Nadir  for some type of confirmation, or reassurance. Are they supposed to be reassuring him?

“I’m okay,” she says, muffled into the ground, and sure enough the nose returns again, this time right along the edge of where the bandages start below her wrist. An odd little noise escapes him, like that pained whine but sadder. Guiltier.

“We had this conversation already, quit your bullshit,” Nadir says, although her voice is tense, and she swears Vance lets out a little irritated huff against her arm. She reaches a hand up, hesitantly, even though she can’t see where it’s going, and it curls around the bottom of his muzzle, edging up against his jaw. Her fingers all but disappear into the fur there. She turns her head no more than an inch, and two golden eyes are staring right back at her. There’s no more level of humanity there than there was before, but there’s a flicker somewhere in there. Recognition. A breakthrough.

Kelsea reaches for the car with her other hand – Vance takes a pace back, but not far enough that she’s forced to let go, and she pulls herself into a sitting position. He looks a little uneasy, tense like he’s ready to take off. It would be the likely thing, for a wild animal.

But he’s not completely wild anymore.

“Hi,” she says, and he takes a step closer to her again, butting his head up against her shoulder. She reaches her arm higher, even though she nearly has to crouch, curled around his very furry head, holding onto him.

“You’re hugging a werewolf right now,” Nadir deadpans, but there’s a satisfied little smile on her face, watching the two of them. She creeps forward herself, slowly, crouching down next to the two of them, and Vance doesn’t flinch away when she lays her hand against his neck. He’s  relaxing, very slowly, eyes still wide open but seemingly content when he flattens his head against Kelsea’s shoulder, between the two of them.

Kelsea didn’t think they’d get this quite so soon. With what she saw, she almost convinced they never would. She thought they’d be doomed to a lifetime full of screaming and locking Vance up and waiting for the sun to come back up.

But not anymore.

Vance pulls his head up, looking away from the two of them. Towards where the woods begin, just down the hill.

“All good?” she murmurs and he looks back to blink at her before his head goes right back around, like it never left. They’re really need to figure out a way to communicate better, in the midst of all of this. Some sort of system.

He pulls back, and she lets her hands go reluctantly, falling into her lap. Nadir lets go too, hand slipping off his neck, and he takes a few uneasy paces away from them, towards the woods. He almost looks  _ confused _ , an uncertain edge to his gaze like he doesn’t know what’s happening. There’s a reluctance to him, like he doesn’t know whether to leave them.

He protected them. He knew there was a threat, and he came right for them.

For some reason that almost means more, than the fact that he got so close at all.

“Go ahead,” Nadir offers quietly, and it’s like someone flicks a switch in him. He trots off down the hill, nearly bounding by the time he gets there, and Kelsea watches him disappear into the trees soundlessly, blending in like he never left.

And for once, that doesn’t terrify her.

—

—

—

“Go ahead,” she repeats to Kelsea, a moment after Vance disappears.

Kelsea leaps to her feet so fast it’s nearly startling, and Nadir watches her run down the hill, all the while convinced she’s about to trip and eat shit. Unlikelier things have happened.

They almost just got attacked, and now they’re here? She’ll take it.

She grabs the backpack out of the car, and her phone, and sets off after them.

Vance has control. Enough to recognize them, to dispose of an enemy that potentially would’ve brought harm to all three of them. He knew exactly what he was doing – the look in his eyes when the other had run off, when he had turned around to stare at Nadir, she had been certain she was about to be his midnight snack.

But he hadn’t done anything. Just stared, an uncertain tilt to his head, before he had turned back to where Kelsea lay unmoving on the pavement.

He has control. It still took him hours to change, to get out here, but Nadir gets the feeling it’s already over.

It’s not quite a scream that she hears from the woods, just before she ducks into their shadows. The sound of something cracking and shifting, before Kelsea lets out a barely concealed yelp. And then voices, muted and lost in the breeze as she navigates towards them, watchful of everything around her.

She’s not surprised to see Vance, a very  _ human  _ Vance in the dirt. Kelsea has latched onto his back and is proceeding to laugh like a maniac, like she just won the lottery, and well. That’s sort of appropriate.

Not really, but Nadir gets it.

“That part still fucking sucks,” Vance complains, and then lowers himself to lay in the dirt. Kelsea doesn’t move at all. “Everything hurts.”

“Did it hurt you?” she asks, and he shakes his head. His breath is coming fast, and she can feel the heat radiating off of him, but that’s normal. What’s not is it’s still dark, hours from dawn, and he just changed back.

“I felt it happening,” he manages. “My body, my body wanted to change back—”

“Then let it happen,” she murmurs, and he nods again. He blinks his eyes open, trying to focus on the canopy above him, attempting to relax into the ground. It’s probably difficult, with Kelsea in the way, and twigs probably poking into places twigs should not be poking. She pulls a sweater out of the bag, and a pair of pants, and drops them on the ground next to him. It’s probably going to take him a few minutes, and she’s still not sure she’s invested in helping him put on pants.

Instead she grabs her phone, unable to resist the urge for any longer. Blair is going to be pissed about this. Pissed that he missed this, that Vance got it so soon, that he’s going to be third, if that, in line of who werewolf Vance apparently decides he likes.

She dials his number, and sits down with a thump in the dirt. Kelsea rolls over off of Vance and next to him, pressing their shoulders together, and he drags his sweater over himself, eyes still closed. It doesn’t really feel safe out here, but it doesn’t feel wrong.

“I cannot fucking believe it,” Vance decides.

Neither can she. But sometimes you have to chose to believe in things. Maybe that’s ridiculous coming from her, when she thought she had nothing to believe in for so long, but now she’s not so sure. Of all the things to not be so sure about, she’s glad it’s this one.

The line clicks, a second before she was about to give up.

“Nadir?”  Dimara  says. “We were just about to call you.”

She’s felt her heart sink that fast one other time in her life, and one other time only.

And knowing what happened that time…

She’s not sure she wants to know, about this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, compared to the next chapter, this one is pretty tame. Until then!


	4. No Hard Feelings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The formatting lately as I transfer stuff to AO3 has been a little trag, so I apologize for that.

** Body #3: **  Is filled with something that’s not quite them, anymore.

—

—

—August 11 th , 2018.

There’s something weird about Target at two in the morning, Tanis decides.

It seems too bright. Like something’s off about it. Every ugly, loud slap of her shoes echoes so far out that she’s sure someone’s about to tell her to be quiet, even though she’s hardly making any noise at all.

They have no purpose behind being here. In fact, she has absolutely no clue where Blair even is. Rooke was behind he r  when they walked in the front door, but he’s disappeared too. She watched him take one look around the place, at how obnoxiously big and red everything was, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that it was overwhelming, even though it’s empty.

She finds Blair ten minutes later in one of the snack aisles, the largest shocker of the century.

“I didn’t even know Target’s were open twenty-four hours,” she says, and switches out one of the boxes of granola bars in the trap of his arms for a different kind.

“I’m honestly not even sure it is. Have you seen a single fucking employee around?”

Well, that’s a terrifyingly good point.  Did they just accidentally break in?

“There’s someone at one of the registers,” Rooke says behind her, and she jolts , nearly spinning around to hit him before she thinks better of it. He examines the shelf and plucks something off from above her head – a package of cookies, and balances it on top of the other things in Blair’s arms.

“You don’t even need to eat,” Blair complains, and then drops the package on his floor in his attempt at putting it back.

“Neither do you,” he fires back. “Why is it called Target?

Tanis bends down to grab the cookies, holding onto them herself, and then shrugs. She has not a single clue. She doesn’t even really know why they’re here when they have food in the car, if you consider four different flavors of Pringles and cereal bars food.

“Why are we here?” she asks aloud.

“Because you weren’t sleeping, and I was bored.”

Tanis figures that’s how most of this impromptu,  un wanted road trip is going to go. Blair stopping at inconvenient times at progressively weirder places because he’s bored, because he got forced into babysitting her. No one trusted him enough to let him go with Vance, not on his own. Dimara’s argument was that they had to split up  _ properly _ , split up the muscle and the people with the more sensible brains so that everything worked out okay.

Tanis also doesn’t think she’s either of those things, and Rooke really isn’t either, so it appears they’ve got a whole lot of strength – and approximately fuckall else.

She probably should’ve voiced that concern, above all others, to Dimara or Nadir or anyone, long before they left. Not sixteen hours after the fact, when it’s far too late. She’s certain no one else is doing this. Everyone else is probably asleep, waiting for the sun to come back up, while she’s stuck with two dead people, neither of whom sleep.

The fact that that fact really isn’t concerning at all should be the  _ most  _ concerning part.

Rooke disappears again sometime on their journey back to the front; whoever dares to look at Target’s security cameras is going to have an absolute heyday with that one. She’s unfortunate enough to watch Blair attempt some of the least graceful things  she’s ever laid eyes on in his quest to keep everything safely contained in his arms, instead of just asking her to take some of it. She starts tossing the pack of cookies between her hands instead, knowing how much it’ll get on his nerves.

“Seriously, why did we come here?” she asks. She’s still wondering.

“There’s no Denny’s around here.”

“Fuck off,  _ there’s no  _ _ Denny’s around here _ . I said there wasn’t a Target around her either and you still managed to find one. And one that was  _ open _ , for Christ’s sake.”

“So you want to go to Denny’s, then?”

She reaches forward to snatch the box of granola bars from his arms. It’s the one that he originally chose, not the one she so helpfully replaced it with. She has no idea when he switched it back. That only makes it all the more satisfying when she pitches it at the back of his head, waiting until he’s a solid ten feet away to let it go. He nearly loses his entire armful all over the ground – lurching around more dramatically than she thought one person was capable of, let alone a supposedly very graceful quick-footed vampire.

“I should have never agreed to watch the two of you,” Blair mutters. Tanis doesn’t know if he’s watching her, or if she’s watching him. It’ll probably depend on the day.

Thankfully they make it back to the register without further incident. Rooke’s right, there is someone waiting for them behind the counter, but he’s either half asleep or tremendously high, and she’s not sure which one’s more likely. Blair drops their stuff all over the conveyor, and two seconds later Rooke skirts around the beverage cooler at the end and drops a sweater over it.

Blair looks at it, and then up to him. “Are you aware that looks exactly the same as the one you’re currently wearing?”

Rooke stares at him, silently. Tanis figured as much. There’s no way that conversation, or rather poor attempt at it, was going anywhere other than nowhere.

Blair mutters something under his breath. “I should go buy some alcohol while we’re here.”

Tanis doesn’t think Target even sells alcohol, but couldn’t care less.

“How do  _ you _  think a cashier would react if someone handed them ID and their birth date was 600 BC?” Tanis says under her breath, nudging Rooke in the side. He puts a hand over his mouth, ducking his head. Blair gives her, or possibly both of them, a very dirty look.

From that point on he looks dead-set on ignoring the both of them. Apparently they’ve done something offensive. He pays, grabs all of the bags, and is out the door before the two of them have even moved a step away from the register.

“You’re just annoyed that you’re the youngest one,” Rooke says quietly, and she rolls her eyes.

“No shit, I’m annoyed that I’m the youngest one,” she says. “Kelsea looks twelve on a  _ good day _ , and—”

“I’m technically nineteen,” Rooke offers.

“Nineteen going on ninety. Good try, grandpa. We should have bought you Scrabble while we’re at it, that seems to pertain to your age group.”

He looks at her, as he steps outside. “I don’t know that is.”

She sighs. Blair’s rather aggressively tossing everything in the trunk of the car – everything he does he seems to do aggressively.

“Maybe we should ask  Julius Caesar  what he wants to do next,” she says, and even though Blair can hear her she still makes sure to say it louder than she needs to, so that her shout bounces all over the parking lot. It’s a good thing no one else is around to hear.

“He’s not  _ that _  old,” Rooke insists. “He was born in like, 17 42 .”

17 44 , in fact . She’s only had Nadir tell her that six dozen times.

“If you’re not in the car in three seconds I’m leaving you here,” Blair announces, and then gets into the front seat. Rooke hurries forward, even though he could follow them regardless. By the time she gets there, all the way to the back of the lot, Blair’s locked the door and is staring at her through the window, key in the ignition.

She stands there. Waits.

He unlocks the door, and she gets in.

—

—

—August 12 th , 2018.

Blair doesn’t mind being on babysitting duty as much as he’s really letting on.

Tanis and Rooke really don’t cause him all that much grief. Sure they say things, but everyone says things. Everyone has had the opportunity, at some point or another, to get on his nerves.

And a lot of that stems from fear. Uncertainty.  Tanis hasn’t spent time around anyone other than Nadir or her parents in years. Rooke hadn’t been spending time around any other breathing human being, period, and now he’s living outside the house with two of them, the only place he even knew anymore.

So he’ll let them keep up, with their quips and their jokes and their general nuisance.

That’s a teenager thing.

It was Rooke that made him pull over, at a pristine little park along the  coast .  There’s  a whole bunch of boats tethered to the dock, stretching far out  into the water  with a little shop at the end . Rooke’s wandered out there with Tanis on his heels, and he sits down at the edge of the path and tosses his legs out over the water, letting  them  swing free.

Contrary to popular belief, they still have problems. A few, really. Just because they split up doesn’t mean this is over, necessarily.  There’s still a family full of hunters somewhere out there that had the guts to threaten them in the first place; they won’t quit just because they up and disappeared. If anything, that will make them search harder.

Dimara said she’d figure things out, but that doesn’t mean she will, either.  He’s worrying about that, and he’s worrying about the full moon in less than two days, and he’s worrying about the fact that he’s got no consistent blood supply right now.

He ate before they left. An hour before Dimara locked the door and sent them all on their merry way.

Rooke won’t pay attention, and he doesn’t think Tanis would care, if he just had to go after someone , but he’s gotten used to not having to do it. And right now, when they’re supposed to be laying low, he shouldn’t. They can’t go back to the blood bank now, with it’s heightened security.

He’s googling a lot of highly suspicious things, right now.

It would all be worth it, if he finds an answer. But so far ,  he’s come up with nothing.

But Tanis still found a way to get Rooke out of the house, even without finding an answer. She came up with it herself. He’s sure he’ll find one. He survived hundreds of years on his own,  and even though there’s been a handful of times where he nearly lost it from starvation, times when he almost thought he’d run dry before he ever found another source, it never happened.

The worst part about the early days is not remembering, but still knowing the extent of the damage you did. How much blood you let run.

Tanis tosses a rock into the water in front of his feet – he looks  up at her, balancing a precariously tall ice cream cone.  Rooke’s following along more slowly, holding one that’s no less tall but at least looks like it’s being held together.

“What, you didn’t get me one?”

“I’m having enough trouble with my own, thanks. You want one, go get one.”

Well, he doesn’t feel like walking all the way to the end of the dock to get it. And like Rooke said, he doesn’t need to eat. Neither of them does. That’s not to say he doesn’t  _ like  _ to eat, because that would be the biggest lie of the century, but it’s not necessary.

There’s only one thing he really needs to survive, and  he can’t find it, currently, without maiming some poor innocent person in a back alley.

He looks down at his phone. Still absolutely nothing. Tanis stops behind his back and looks down  at it as well  – he hopes the drop that lands on the back of his shoulder is the early signs of rain, and not  the stickiness from her ice cream.

“We’ll figure something out,” she says , taking a bite out of the cone. No joking at all.

Probably because it’s an actual, serious matter.

“You have ice cream on your back,” Rooke informs him as he walks up, helpful as ever, and he sighs. Tanis narrows her eyes  at it, like she hadn’t even noticed it, and then shrugs sheepishly, like she’s actually embarrassed. Not that she ever would be.

He wipes it off, and then clambers to his feet.

He may not have any blood, but at least he has more than one shirt.

—

—

— August 13 th , 2018.

The worst thing about being around two people that don’t need to sleep is trying to sleep yourself.

Blair has insisted that he’ll stop. That he’ll pay for her to sleep in a bed, even if he’s not going to , even if Rooke would probably disappear for the entire night. But there’s no point. The whole night she’ll listen to at least one of them not-quite breathing, way too loud, or she’ll hear the buzz of the television , someone slamming the door next door. She won’t sleep, so she won’t make him pay for it.

But she’s not really sleeping in the car, either.

She’s got a pillow wedged between her shoulder and the window, and she’s dragged a blanket up over her shoulders in the passenger seat . Blair  had  stopped for a while – she hadn’t opened her eyes to see where – but he’s driving again, and the road is smooth and winding, and hardly any cars go whizzing by, the night almost silent. Even the radio is turned down nearly all the way , just the monotonous buzz of a voice in the background, faint music.

And she still can’t sleep.

It’s more infuriating than anything. She’s hardly slept at all since they left, and doesn’t know how the two of them manage it. When Blair crashes he crashes  _ hard _ , but Rooke just never actually sleeps. She thinks she’d  miss it too much.

Not that he really has a choice in the matter, about sleeping. She doesn’t envy him that at all.

The worst part is, she can feel them both looking at her. Glancing over carefully every few minutes, hopeful that she’s finally  gone.

“Is she asleep?” Rooke asks quietly, some fifteen minutes later, and she groans.

“I told you we can stop,” Blair insists. “I don’t want you to drop dead from  sleep deprivation.”

“Because Nadir would kill you.”

“That, and it would be particularly awkward to explain to everyone else, I’m sure. Do you want me to stop?”

She shakes her head, tugs both the pillow and the blanket free, and then climbs over the center console into the backseat . Rooke blinks in alarm , curling his legs tighter to himself. She flops down the opposite way and wedges the pillow back against the door until it’s semi-comfortable.

“I take it that’s a no?” Blair asks, and she grumbles. “That looks enjoyable.”

It’s not.  But it’s slightly less terrible than being cramped up in the front seat. She cracks her eyes open  and Rooke’s staring at her, probably wondering exactly where the hell he’s supposed to go.

“Are you planning on staying back here?” she asks him. 

“Do you want me to?”

“I really don’t care, but if you are, I’m putting my legs on you.”

His expression doesn’t change at all. After a moment he lifts his arms up, freeing up the space in his lap , and she drops her legs into them. She still can’t stretch out fully, and her knees are bent, but it’s  like staying at a five star resort compared to her previous situation.

Rooke doesn’t look like he knows what to do, for a bit. He finally settles with his arms over her legs, hands curling around them so he doesn’t jostle her even further, and slumps down a bit.

Blair  glances over his shoulder. “That’s adorable.”

“Shut up,” she mumbles. “I’m gonna text Nadir and tell her you’re being awful.”

“Would she really be surprised?” Rooke asks, and she snickers.

“You know, you have gotten progressively  snarkier  since she got you out of the house,” Blair informs him. “Were you aware of that?”

“I think it’s a side-effect of spending time around you.”

She snickers again. That’s probably true. Rooke’s definitely getting it from Blair, first and foremost, and the rest of it is probably either coming from Dimara or Celia. She’s certainly an option too , but Rooke tends to look to her for more pressing matters, like getting him out of imprisonment.

“Were you snarky before?” she asks. She feels like she’s the only one that could say that and not feel dis gustingly  awkward about it.  It feels like that goes both ways, too. When she opens her mouth and comes out with it, Rooke never really reacts.

He shrugs. “Not really. That was more my sister, I think.”

He’s never mentioned a sister before.  Parents, obviously so, but never any siblings. There were enough people in the photographs packed up downstairs that she knew he had to have some, even if she never knew who they were, exactly, but he’s never felt the need to bring it up.

“You think?” she asks.

“Been a long time,” he says quietly. He leans his head against the window, and she figures that’s the end of the conversation. It  _ has _  been a long time. She can’t even remember the entirety of what she ate yesterday – asking him to remember facts ninety years passed isn’t really fair of her.  There’s so many things lost in his head, so many things pushed back in order for him to deal with what’s in front of him now, today.

“Yeah, well,  it’s  _ been a long time _  and I still know that my brother was an asshole,” Blair says , and even though her eyes are finally feeling heavy, even though she thinks sleep is still around the corner, she still manages a smile.

And just before she does fall asleep, hopefully for a long while, she thinks Rooke does, too.

—

—

— August 15 th , 2018.

“When Dimara said lay low, I don’t think she meant go to the mall,” Tanis says.

Dimara says a lot of things, most of which Blair ignores. He probably  wouldn’t have even been allowed in the house in the first place, if he hadn’t been ignoring half of what was said in that conversation. Rooke had told him, in a much nicer way, to fuck off. Celia had looked like she was about to tell him that, physically.  If she was quick enough.

“There’s too many people in here,” Rooke says.  His eyes are darting every which way , and if he gets any closer Blair is just going to offer to piggyback him around, because that’s basically what they’re already doing.

And he told them  to stay in the car, if they had both wanted, but neither ha d done so.

He won’t admit it, but he doesn’t want to be around so many people either. After today he’s driving out of Portland  and into the middle of nowhere, at least for a little while. Any single one of these people could be dangerous to them, if they so decide it.  He doesn’t really have a strong desire to start anything in the middle of the mall, if someone else does first.

He nearly loses them in the crowd as he beelines towards the first jewelry store he sees, which would probably be for the best.  He pulls the thing out of his pocket before he’s even  inside. There’s not a single customer in there doing anything of importance anyway. Most are just browsing the cases, dutifully avoiding  meeting an employee eye to eye . One is on him instantly, because of this, but he’s grateful when she pipes up and offers a cheery hello, instantly offering any service.

He lays the necklace out on the counter, still with it’s broken, twisted clasp. “How much to properly fix this thing?”

She straightens it out , leveling the ends. “It would probably be cheaper to purchase a new chain, instead of—”

“Nah, I’m good with that one. Or could you not do it?”

“No, no! We could.  It might take a few days ; it looks older than most things we deal with, but it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Tanis chooses that prime opportunity to wedge herself under his arm , gaining a clear sightline to the counter in front of him . “Oh my god, you’re getting it fixed ? T hat is so corny.”

The employee looks at her. He slaps his hand over her mouth.

“Ignore her,” he says.  “I’ll pay however much it costs.”

“Sounds good. Just let me look a few things up, and I’ll get you an estimate.”

He nods, and she takes off for the computer. He only removes his hand from her mouth because he’s getting more and more suspicious by the second that she’s going to lick him.  He turns the necklace back ground, so that he can get a good look at it. It’s a miracle they’ve even still got possession of it.

“You know, that thing is the reason she finally told me about you. I asked her about it, and then asked her again like six more times, ‘cause she wouldn’t tell me.  Took a few months to crack her, but I won out eventually.”

Blair’s not surprised that she did. All those years – it was probably a good thing, that Nadir finally told someone.  It’s a good thing Nadir was with Tanis in general, or this whole mess probably never would have even happened.

But it’s an alright mess. A pretty good one, in fact.

“She’ll appreciate it, that you got it fixed,” Tanis continues, and he nods. “But it’s still corny.”

Corny for him, anyway. He can’t even tell her it’s not. “Where’d Rooke run off to?”

“I think  h e went back to the car. He was freaking out  about all the people. ”

When does he not, though? The only reason they even got him in Target was because it was the middle of the night. City Hall was a different story ; that was serious. Being dragged around into busy places for no reason at all apparently doesn’t sit well with him.  It doesn’t really sit well with Blair either, at this moment in time, and even Tanis appears to be sticking closer than usual, so apparently they’re all on edge.

The employee returns a few minutes later  and they watch her scribble some things down, handing him a copy and a receipt once he pays for it, n ever once asking how much it actually was. All he cares about is the time – two weeks, tops, if they have to send it out of store, and he can come back for it.

It’s a small fix, when they need about a hundred of them , but it’s better than nothing.

Tanis is still right by his side, navigating through the hall, weaving in and out of all the foot traffic.  Every time someone even looks at him he wonders if something’s about to happen. It’s been a long time since he felt that level of paranoia, since he felt worried. All of the smells in here are jumbled, everyone’s heartbeat thundering so loud from their walk that it’s hard to hear anything else.

There’s other  _ things  _ in here, the common things that integrate  easily  into society, things that don’t properly scare people.

His eyes are only slightly dark, at this point, but he still watches some people linger on them, when they catch his eye. The employee hadn’t even blinked at it, but she probably sees his kind pass through a lot. She probably sees a lot worse, in a place like this.  It’s the outsiders, the people that only take a trip to the mall once every few months. The mothers who lunge forward and grab their children before they can sprint across his path.

And God, if only they knew what Tanis was. Everything would be even worse, if they knew.

“So, you going to buy me lunch, or do I have to buy it myself?” Tanis asks, and he rolls his eyes.

“I forgot how hungry a normal person gets. Do you ever stop eating?”

“Says you, Marco Polo.  Is that a yes or no?”

“It’s going to be a no, if you don’t quit it with the names.”

“Was Julius Caesar better ?” 

“Firm no.”

She makes a face, but brightens when he veers off in the direction of the food court.  He does get it, though. He’s still going to eat something. And he’d probably look that eager as well, if someone told him they found him a consistent blood supply. If he had something reliable to fall back on.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t have a food court that he can just walk into and back out of five minutes later, satisfied.

If only it was that easy.

Nothing’s ever that easy, when it comes to him.

—

—

—August 20 th , 2018.

When they finally stop and crash at a motel for the night, Tanis has never been happier.

It feels like it takes seconds for her to fall asleep. Her head hits the pillow and the mattress, although lumpy , is the most comfortable thing she’s laid on in the past week that’s not Rooke. That’s the stem of the issue. Blair’s apparently tired of watching the two of them attempt to work out an arrangement in the backseat, one that usually ends in her just sleep ing  half on him when he doesn’t really move .

A bed’s nice though, too. She can’t deny it.

Of course she’s up in the middle of the night though, unsure why at first. Blair’s talking, but she can’t hear anyone responding . One of the lights are on – not one awake person in this room needs a light to be on, damn them all.  Blair’s still droning on and on, and she can’t make out anything she’s saying. That probably has to do with her severe sleep deprivation.

Finally, when it feels like it’s never about to end, she opens her eyes. Rooke is sitting on the edge of the bed, out of range of her feet. Blair says something else into the phone, to whoever he’s talking to in the middle of the night, and then hangs up.

“What time is it?” she groans, and they both look at her.

“4:30,” Rooke says, and she lifts the pillow up, throws her head under it, and then brings it back down.

“Why?” she asks. She knows Blair can hear her. “ _ Why _ ? What conversation cannot wait until like, noon?”

Blair doesn’t respond, and he stays silent for so long that she finally dares to bring her head back out, peering at him . He’s typing something out on his phone, and looks back up at them.

“I’m going for a walk,” he announces. A walk doesn’t mean a walk, with him. She opens her mouth to respond, opens her mouth to repeat  _ why  _ once again, and he’s gone. The door slams shut .

“I think something happened with Vance,” Rooke says. “Vance, or Kelsea. I don’t know. He told her to go somewhere.”

“Nadir?”

Rooke nods. Sure, Blair and Nadir have been talking. Her and Nadir have been talking. But this actually sounds vaguely urgent, if not more than that.  She stumbles out of bed and tugs open the drapes – Blair’s already nowhere in sight, but at least the car’s still there.

“Should we call someone else?” Rooke asks, and she shakes her head. There’s no reason to upset everyone else, especially if neither of them  knows  the whole story. She’ll ask when Blair comes back , or Rooke will. That still doesn’t help the fact that she’s desperate to know  _ now _ , when there’s no telling when Blair will come back.

Clearly, no one’s going to tell her anything.

The good  she knows how to find out answers for herself.

She buried a very innocent looking pack of tealights at the bottom of her dufflebag. She’s got no bowl , no lighter – but there’s a pair of matches in the desk drawer, and the sink should be deep enough that she’ll be able to fill it.

“What are those for?” Rooke asks , heading into the bathroom after her. She plugs the sink ,  turns the water onto full blast, and drops a few of the candles around the sink’s rim, a few at the edge of the counter.

“I can scry,” she tells him. “See the future, but if I concentrate on something I can see the past sometimes, too.”

“Is that safe?” he asks, and she doesn’t respond. It’s definitely not safe. The lurking terror of what happened last time is still inside her, too, but no one but Nadir knows that ever even happened. And Rooke’s here with her – he won’t go anywhere.  At least she won’t be alone.

“You can’t just wait until Blair gets back?” he continues.

“Do you really think he’s going to tell us?”

She doesn’t, for some sinking reason. He would’ve just told them in the first place, if it was something that didn’t matter. But he told Nadir something, told her to go somewhere after something clearly  _ happened _ , and now he’s gone for a reason he didn’t tell them.

She strikes the match and puts them to all the candles one by one, and then shuts one of the bathroom lights off. The other one is dimmer, further away, lurking over the tub a little ominously.

She turns the sink off. “Ground rules. Only rule, really. If I’m not back in an hour , pull me back out of it. If I look like I’m in distress of any kind before then, pull me back out.”

“And how do I do that?” Rooke asks, eyes wide. To be perfectly honest, she doesn’t really know.  She’s never been the one doing it. Her dad’s done it a few times, her mom only once because she panicked and nearly knocked all the candles over. Nadir’s done it so many times that she can pull her out of it with practiced ease, save for the last time.

“Like you’re waking someone up,” she decides, as the appropriate thing to say. “Just pretend like you’re waking me up. ”

“And what if you don’t?”

“I will,” she tells him confidently. Better not to share the details, of what happened last time. “I will, don’t worry.”

He looks like he’s worrying. Asking Rooke not to worry seems foolish, especially with everything else going on.  There’s a high probability that she shouldn’t be putting herself in danger if there’s something else going on outside these walls, but it also doesn’t feel like she’s got anything to lose.

There’s nothing the other side can take from her.

Maybe it can do things. Try to harm her , if she lingers too long. 

But she won’t allow it to keep her.

—

—

—

Like he said, nothing’s ever easy with him.

At least this time nothing is actually Blair’s fault.

Trust Vance to go missing on them. Trust Kelsea to open a door and get herself attacked by a werewolf, because that’s exactly what happened, by Nadir’s account, and he’s just got to believe her.

The three of them are nowhere close to Portland, but he makes it back there in record time on foot. Faster than the car would’ve taken him.  He was almost able to forget, how jumbled up everything was in the city. Out nowhere’s way everything is so clear, smells like the earth and the trees.

And here – here there’s a lot of fucking blood.

Ten days isn’t much. It’s really not. But he had successfully pushed it back and ignored it, until he crosses Portland’s city limits again and smells it, so much of it that he’s nearly sick.

He probably shouldn’t have even come back. Vance will find his own way back, he’s sure of it.  Nadir will get Kelsea to a place that can fix her up, even if he doesn’t necessarily want either of them there. Clearly, it’s not about what he wants.

There’s no way he’ll be able to focus enough to find Vance. Even fifteen minutes of wandering around at Portland’s edges proves that. Unless Vance comes walking right down the road towards him, he’s not in the state right now to pick him out.

His phone starts ringing, and he picks it up without looking.

“You were right, he’s going to fix her,” Nadir says, and he lets out a sigh of relief.  “How did you meet these people again?”

“You wouldn’t approve .”

“Probably not,” she agrees. “Any sign of him?”

“No,” he answers. “I probably shouldn’t be this close to actual civilization anyway , at least not right now.”

“Are you okay?”

“You’ve got enough to worry about. Don’t start worrying about me too.”

“I always worry about you,” she says, and he knows that. It’s weird, to know that someone’s constantly worrying about him. Even weirder to know that he worries about her a lot too, the way he’s starting to worry about everyone else now that all of this bullshit’s apparently going on.

“I’ll be fine,” he mutters, and rubs a hand down his face. His eyes are probably starting to look a little obvious. “Kelsea will be fine too, and Vance. And you.”

“So you’ve told me before,” she murmurs.  “Go back to the motel. ”

He should stay out here, look for Vance. At least put some more effort into it, before he calls it quits, but he’s starting to get hungry and he hasn’t slept a wink since they left and he doesn’t think he can tonight.

“Let me know when you two get back,” he asks of her. “Or let me know if anything happens. Maybe I’ll actually sleep if I know everything’s okay.”

“I hope so,” she says softly. “I’ll let you know as soon as I have an answer. For anything.”

He nods , and lets the phone linger until he hears her hang up. He hesitates, fingers hovering over the buttons. He probably shouldn’t . But he should, all the same.

He calls Dimara’s number, preparing for the inevitable scolding that he’ll get when she finds out he didn’t call her the second he knew. He can only imagine the talking to that Nadir will get, if Dimara finds out this all happened the night of the full moon and she managed to hold off on telling someone for this long.

He ’ll look for three days. That’s what he’ll tell her. He’ll look for three days and then call her  once again  and let her know what he finds, even if it’s nothing, and then she’s allowed to get herself involved.

That’s what he’s committed to telling her, but she never answers. He lets the phone ring for as long as he possibly can  before he gives up, in all the ways a person can give up, and turns back for the long walk to the motel.

A walk that he turns into seconds, when he’s running. He hits  the parking lot before a full two minutes has even passed on his phone. He hasn’t even been gone an hour, really. Not that he should have gone running off at all,  but the urgency had been there. It had felt necessary.

Both Tanis and Rooke are missing from the main room, but his initial train of thought is stopped by the car keys that he knows are in his pocket, the car still parked outside. Clearly they  didn’t go anywhere. They’re not that stupid.

The front door slams shut, and Rooke pokes his head out of the bathroom, eyes wide as saucers.

“Where’s Tanis?” he asks.

“Uh,” Rooke says , quite eloquently, and then jerks his thumb behind himself, further into the bathroom. He takes a few steps forward, until he can lean into see—

“God, what the fuck?” is all that comes out, which seems appropriate, if nothing else. He knows his eyes get fucked up, but that’s beyond his control, and for some reason he gets the feeling that Tanis’ eyes being completely whited over is not a happy accident. The sink is full to the brim of water, completely glassed over . She’s standing in front of it, staring down into the water even though her eyes aren’t properly there anymore. Like she can still really see something.

“Scrying, I think she said it was?” Rooke offers.

Yeah, he’s heard of that before. Not that he retains much, unless it’s necessary, but he’s pretty sure that’s not safe.

“What did she tell you?”

“To pull her out , at an hour. Or if she looked distressed or anything, to do it then.”

“How long’s it been?”

“Forty minutes?”

“Jesus, you two waited all of two minutes after I left?” Blair snaps.  “How much of a brain do you have between the two of you? I feel like I have enough shit to worry about, and now—”

Now he really doesn’t know. He’s over-reacting. Shocker.  Apparently the hunger gets worse with stress – that feels like something he should have retained, if nothing else.

“You need to eat,” Rooke says quietly.

“Thank-you. I had no idea.”

It feels bad right now, but it’s not. Not really. Once all of this calms down he’ll be fine, as long as he figures out what to do. He doesn’t want to drag the two of them into the middle of him attacking someone, but that might be what they’re looking at.

He might not be dragging Tanis anywhere, if this shit doesn’t end soon.

Tanis might as well have been turned to stone. She’s not moving at all, and the rise and fall of her chest is shallow, so shallow that her heartbeat  is only pulsing once every few seconds. He’s listening to each harsh, little sound thumping in her chest. Listening as  another minute passes, and they pick back up. Suddenly the heartbeats are doubling, louder and louder, until they’re faster than even a normal heartrate.

Too fast .

“I’m gonna consider this distress,” he says flatly, and grabs at her arm. Rooke takes a step back, apparently letting him do the job . Her skin’s  clammy and cold, and normally he would attribute that to himself and not someone else, but not this time.

He jerks her to the right, her feet stumbling, and it’s like she comes back to life with a gasp , hands flailing around before her feet slip right out from underneath her.  He grabs her under the arms, and instead of righting herself, standing back up , she lets herself hang there with her legs buckled under  her.

At least her eyes are back to normal, though. They’re a little glazed ove r, dazed and confused, but at least she’s back.

“Hey,” Rooke says, looking her over. “Did you figure  out what happened?”

“That’s what this was about?” he snaps. “Of course, let’s just do the most irrational thing first instead of just waiting for Blair to get back, that sounds about right .”

Rooke, on his part, at least manages to look a little guilty, but Tanis still hasn’t said a word.  Her eyes have yet to focus on anything of importance, and if she’s shocked at his sudden reappearance, she doesn’t say so. He pulls her  further upright, until both of her feet are flat on the floor , but doesn’t let go.

Rooke reaches forward to drain the sink, blowing all the candles out, and that finally seems to shake her out of it. She plants a hand on the lip of the counter , cautiously pulling away from him until she’s standing on her own.

“I’m taking it that’s a no?” Rooke guesses , and she shakes herself, still quiet. He’s staring at her like she’s about to tell him, although Blair is pretty certain  that whateve r  questions she wen t under asking are  still the same they were before: unanswered.

“Remind me never  do that again,”  Tanis finally decides on, voice uneven. She scrubs her hands over her eyes , blinking heavily at herself in the mirror.

Blair would be pretty content if she just wasn’t doing it in the first place, but apparently they’re not going to get so lucky.  He can’t keep a permanent eye on her. Even if he could, he has a feeling she wouldn’t listen anyway.  If their positions were reversed and he was the one being left in the dark, he’d be doing it too. So what if it’s for her own good, even if she doesn’t know it? There’s no point in the both of them stressing about it too, when Nadir’s doing it enough for all of them.

“What you saw – was it not good?” Rooke asks . Blair felt like that should have been obvious enough, but Rooke  of all people isn’t about to start jumping to the worst case scenario if he doesn’t have to.

Tanis turns around to look at him , and whatever she sees must not satisfy her the way she expected it to. She  nudges Rooke out of the way, and takes a few slow, careful steps out of the bathroom, growing more confident when her feet  hit the carpet.

“Never is,” she says finally. “I’m going back to bed. Don’t wake me up.”

It’s not quite fear that’s in her eyes. To be scared of something you have to actually know what it is , and there’s no doubt in his mind that she has yet to figure out exactly what she saw . But that can almost be worse, when something is certainly going on and you can’t tell yourself what, let alone anyone else.

She crawls back into bed, burying her face in the pillow , and for the first time since they really left Blair actually feels like he should close his eyes himself.

The issue is actually letting it happen, and he doesn’t think he can’t right now. Not when he’s got ten other issues lined up in the back of his brain, waiting to be paid attention to.

“Fuck,” he says simply.  It’s the only word that will come to mind.

Rooke nods.

At least someone else gets it.

—

—

— August 24 th , 2018.

Another night in the car, right at midnight , and Tanis can’t sleep.

She didn’t think it was possible to get any less sleep than she already was , but that fence has been climbed over and left far behind her .

Rooke’s never going to start looking any different, no matter what happens, but Blair’s starting to get to the point where  if they don’t do something soon, he’ll probably fuck off and leave the two of them to their own devices for a day to fix it, if they don’t get dragged into it.

The sensible thing to do would be to climb into the backseat  and make Rooke her human pillow once again. Blair’s not in the mood to make jokes about it, or point it out. The main issue is that she doesn’t even want to move because of how much energy it would take.

She never in her wildest dreams thought that she would miss the simplicity of her little cabin hidden in the trees . At least then she knew exactly what bed she would be crawling into at night, if there was one at all. It was small and decrepit and anyone else would have hated it, but she didn’t.

And if she hadn’t  been living there, she wouldn’t be here.

Not here in the present, physical sense. She doesn’t really want to be here, stuck in the car for god only knows how many more days. But in a time where she met everyone else , when she successfully got Rooke out of the house, when it seemed like her parents were finally happy that she had somewhere reliable to stay, and more than one person to talk to.

“There’s been a car following us for like six miles now,” Blair says, very casually, and even though she wasn’t asleep it feels like his words wake her up regardless. Tanis swivels in the passenger seat to look back, towards where Rooke’s already gazing. There’s nothing to make out, except the dark shadow of the pick-up and the headlights reflected at them.

“Any idea who it is?”

“No.”

“Looks like every other pick-up truck,” Rooke says.

“Because you’ve seen every pick-up in the country, right?” Blair scoffs. Tanis is more focused on the fact that they’re being followed while they’re in the process of just aimlessly driving around, like they always have been. It’s an anomaly, where there shouldn’t be one.

“We should probably turn off, should we not?”

“Already doing that,” Blair insists, and then swerves into the other lane and across the road, towards another one that cuts through the trees. She didn’t even see it. She watches out her own window as the other car goes sailing past the turnoff, clearly not in preparation to follow that quickly. Or maybe they just weren’t following them at all. It seems unlikely, at this point.

Her seatbelt goes slack against her chest; she hears the sharp  _ click  _ as it comes free and turns back, already confused.

Not fast enough.

In the two seconds it takes her to turn back Rooke’s already leaned so far forward into the front half of the car that she can hardly see Blair. All she does see, the most important thing, is the way Rooke grabs the steering wheel and wrenches it to the side, and when she chances a glance out the windshield all she sees are the trees from one side rapidly approaching, at the edge of the ditch.

Blair yells something and does more things in a split second than she ever could. He puts one hand on Rooke’s chest and shoves him back so hard that she’s shocked he doesn’t go flying out the back windshield. As soon as Rooke’s gone his hand finds his own seatbelt, just as she feels the car go tipping over, still too fast, and then he reaches over and grabs her.

Nothing’s ever fast enough, besides the bad things.

Blair may grab her but that still doesn’t stop her head from cracking into the window as the car goes sailing into the ditch. There’s a very sharp crack, the tires squealing, trying to find purchase. She only half feels them slam into something, either the other side of the ditch or one of the trees, the harsh crunch of metal against metal.

She doesn’t remember blacking out, but when she opens her eyes there’s blood dripping down off the side of her face. The car is mostly upright, smoking from underneath the hood, completely crumpled in from the front end. Rooke’s gone. Blair managed to keep her mostly pinned against the seat, but he’s alarmingly still, half on top of her, and it’s hard to breathe. Even when she puts a hand on his shoulder he doesn’t move at all.

She tries not to panic.

It’s not all that successful.

Even through the cacophony of noise – the ringing in her ears, and something in the car chiming, the smoke hissing out from under the hood and  dissipating  into the air, she still hears  the harsh screech of tires against pavement  before  they  slide to a stop, and the noise is so loud and so close  that she almost stops breathing , right behind the car. There’s the sound of voices, three or four of them. Footsteps stomping through the grass, down and down and closer .

“Blair,” she tries , and he doesn’t move. Doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t do  _ anything  _ and if this situation gets any worse —

Someone wrenches open the driver’s side door, pulling at the twisted frame of it until it comes loose with a squeal, nearly falling of it’s hinges. She can’t see anything except the silhouette, and the hands. Hands that reach in and grab Blair off of her, yanking him backwards until he’s out of the car, where he hits the ground with a limp thud.

This isn’t happening.

“Well, it doesn’t appear that you successfully killed her, but this one’s neck might be broken, so it’s not a total loss.”

This isn’t  _ fucking happening. _

There’s no getting out of this. Blair is — God, she can’t even say it. If she says it she’ll lose her mind.

“I told you it wouldn’t be.”

There’s no equivalent to the terror that goes through her then.  The sound of that voice, a voice that had been in the car  with her just a minute before. She can’t push away the fear long enough to come up with an explanation, at least not one that helps any. That’s Rooke’s voice , and it’s not quiet or nervous or distant – just cool, unbothered. The same voice that  _ just tried to kill her _ ?

She hears the footsteps approaching her side of the car and presses herself back into the seat, squeezing her eyes shut.  If she doesn’t look, if she just avoids it altogether, maybe it won’t be real. Maybe she can pretend that she’s swapped places with Blair and won’t have to live through this nightmare.

The noise stops – and something drops on the roof of the car. His hand, probably , as he leans in to get a closer look.

“Are we  _ really  _ gonna play this game?”

That’s precisely what this is. She just got dragged into the middle of someone’s twisted, fucked up game and she’s already losing  to someone,  _ something  _ that is most definitely not Rooke. She won’t accept it.

“C’mon, his neck’s already broken. What else do you want me to do to him, to get you to cooperate?”

Her eyes open so fast for a moment all she can see is red, her own blood caked over her face. And Rooke, leaning forward into what’s left of the window, staring at her. Dare she says it – he looks amused.

He leans in closer. Drops both of his forearms over the edge of the broken  glass.

“If you even touch me, you’re dead,” she manages, and even though her voice shakes she’s proud just for getting it out.

He smiles, a slow thing that grows  inch by inch, until she’s afraid its about to split off the edge of his face. “Little late for that, don’t you think?”

It’s definitely not Rooke. No matter what she’s looking at – his face and his body, the voice she’s listening  to is not entirely his. There’s something off about it now, a manic uplift that hadn’t been there before.

It’s not Rooke.

If it’s not Rooke, then what is it?

He looks away for a moment, up and over the car, and then  wrenches the door open. She flinches, and he must be taking that as a reward.  The door opens and she doesn’t move when he goes rooting around by her feet, popping back up with  Blair’s phone in hand. The little notification light  is  flashing , and he leans away to mess with it.

She should be doing something. Making a break for it, or even just looking for her own phone. But something about  this has completely paralyzed her, rendering her motionless.

Rooke pockets the phone, and then looks up at her with another smile. “I’ll have to answer that later. Get out.”

_ Answer what _ ? she wants to ask, but already knows that he’ll rub it in her face, the fact that all her saviors are either too far away to do anything, or dead in the grass ten feet away.  Nadir, presumably, will never know it’s not Blair answering her. No one will know.

“Out,” he repeats. “I’m not stupid enough to drag you.”

She didn’t think she was capable of hurting Rooke with her bare hands, but maybe the rules are different now.  Maybe she could – although it’s not going to do any good now.

The only reason she finally moves, achingly slow , is the thought of Blair completely defenseless behind her, and how easy it would be for one of them to kill him for good. She pulls herself out of the car, carefully testing her weight before she gets to her feet on the slope of the ditch.  Rooke backs up, even when she wobbles, and gestures up towards the road.

Fuck,  _ fuck  _ she doesn’t want to do this.

She starts struggling her way back up  with him on her heels , because it doesn’t matter what she wants.

If it ever did.

When she finally gets to the top she stops, unsure of what she’s supposed to do next . Rooke skirts around her, going for the truck. She can still hear two voices , further into the ditch where she can no longer see, and there are two more  lurking at the edge of the road , watching her.

“She’s not as threatening as one would expect,” one guy says – the uglier one. That’s how she’s going to refer to them: Ugly and Uglier. It’s about all they deserve.

Except neither are they, really. The only real threatening thing about them is the weapons. There’s a gun resting on the hood of the car, a crossbow hanging down by their legs. Hunters, maybe. Probably. Whoever came and left that threat at their door, if she had to make an educated guess.

And now she’s standing here in front of them, a few minutes post-them getting run off the road and demolished, and Rooke’s completely and totally lost it.

Not Rooke. Whoever the hell it is.

“Alright, so here’s how this is going to work,” he says, and she stays still, resolutely so. No reactions to be seen here. “Either you get in the car of your own free will, or one of us will do it for you. What’s it going to be?”

She doesn’t think she has to say it. She knows, and he knows it too, that there’s no way she’s just going to walk over and put herself in the car. 

She glances over her shoulder, and her head throbs. Still no clear view on what’s going on.

“Should just get it over with, put a bullet in her head. You said we didn’t need her—”

“And now I’ve changed my mind,” Rooke says. “I think she’ll make things interesting.”

“We didn’t sign up for  _ interesting _ .”

“And you wouldn’t have signed up for anything, without me. I came to you, remember?”

All he times Rooke disappeared. All the times they looked and he wasn’t there, and  it  led to this. And what could they have done? There’s no stopping someone who can disappear right in front of your eyes.

Even though he’s acting as if she can hurt him. Maybe the thing inside him, maybe that can be hurt. If the two really are merged, then there are ways out of this.

“You decided what you’re doing yet?” Rooke asks, and she looks back to him. “Don’t worry, Blair’s coming too.”

“Leave him here.”

“Leave him here?” he echoes, and laughs. “That’s not how this works. You’re giving them more incentive to kill you, at this point. They’re right. We don’t need you to get this done.”

Well, that was about the only idea she had, and it doesn’t appear he’s up for bargaining. It doesn’t help that her head’s still bleeding, and she can’t even think straight. There’s glass embedded in her palms, blood streaked all down her arms.

Ugly pulls the gun off the hood and points it directly at her head. Rooke looks between them. She must look a little panicked, pleading – like he’s actually going to start giving a shit, if she looks him in the eye long enough.

He shrugs. “Go for it.”

He cocks the hammer back, and the click shatters all her resolve.

“Don’t,” she forces out. “Don’t— fuck, just let me get in, then.”

Rooke smiles and pulls the door open, waving an arm like he’s inviting her in. The gun drops.

If she refuses now, she’s probably not getting a chance to get them to stop. One of them will shoot her, almost point-black, and she doesn’t think she’s the type of person to get a chance to come back.

She approaches the car, edging around Rooke and his arm propping the door open, holding her breath. There’s no way she’s getting out of this. Maybe if things were different, maybe if Blair wasn’t dead somewhere in the ditch behind her. Maybe if she was anyone else, but she’s not.

She’s got nothing but her bare hands, and a hunch, and maybe a second of anger left before she deflates altogether.

Only half of her really turns, just so she can gauge where she needs to go, and she lunges forward and grabs him around the wrist, a second before he takes a pace back. She doesn’t  _ think _ _ , _ __ just lets that anger pulse out, and she feels the tremor in her own arm exactly like last time, before she killed that guy with her bare hands.

It’s nowhere near as strong as last time, and she knows it, but Rooke still yells like it hurts the same. There’s the rising horror, at the sound of him and his voice in pain because of something she’s doing to him, quickly surpassed by satisfaction at the way his face twists, at how quickly he tries to get away from her. She clamps her fingers down tighter and he drags her nearly a foot away from the car. A shadow passes over them both, coming in from the left, and a second later the gun smashes into the side of her head.

So much for that.

She crumples to the ground at their feet, and he finally succeeds in ripping his arm away. Her head hits the ground and she nearly blacks out from that alone. Not good.

“Told you, you should’ve fucking killed her.”

Something comes swinging down, again.

Definitely not good.

—

—

—August 25 th , 2018.

Blair’s starting to get sick and tired of waking up with his entire body in pain.

At least this time it seems to be concentrated in one place, and he knows almost exactly what that means. It’s no surprise, then, that he’s face down on the ground. Even when he opens his eyes he can’t see anything for a while, just a little gray and a lot of black. There’s hardly any distinguishable scent – just the staleness of old water, and too much dust. That little to take in usually means isolation, means a place where nothing else exists.

And it’s usually not good, either.

“Blair?”

He was pretty certain that it was Tanis with him, but in this state wasn’t willing to bet on it.

“You doing okay over there?”

“I’m,” he starts, and then re-thinks everything he was going to say. “I’m really wondering if I broke my neck at some point, and now I’m more concerned by the fact that I’m pretty sure my hands are fucking shackled behind my back.”

“If it helps at all, mine are too.”

“And what about the neck thing?”

“I think – the impact, with the car. You must’ve hit something the wrong way.”

Well, that’s one way to put it. He turns his head to the side, wincing, but his neck doesn’t ache all that bad. Tanis is sitting upright across from him, only a few feet away, up against what looks like a support in the middle of the room. It stretches out for a long while, nearly black in some places. Just any average, very large basement.

He remembers getting out of his seat and grabbing her, knowing full well if he didn’t that she was going through the windshield, but it doesn’t appear he spared her everything. There’s blood dried all down her face, cuts littered all over the right side of her face, the largest one being a gash across her temple, nearly into her hair.

And he keeps looking around him, too, even though he’s  not  able to move his neck too fast.

“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” he decides eventually.

“It’s not him.”

“What?”

“It’s not – it's not him. I was awake, right after. There were four other people in the truck. Hunters, I think. But it’s like there’s something inside him.”

“What, like he’s fucking possessed?” he asks. “How does a ghost get possessed?”

Tanis shrugs, and then grimaces. “I don’t know. But it’s not him.”

To be honest, Blair’s pretty grateful that it’s not just good old Rooke that went and lost his mind on them, but he doesn’t know if not having Rooke at all is just the worst half to that.

“They made it sound like he was trying to kill me. They were all talking like I was supposed to be dead after the accident, but then he said that it would probably make things interesting—”

“Stop,” he interrupts. “Just stop for a second.”

Tanis has probably been awake for a while now, trying to think of something to explain all of this. But she doesn’t know what he knows. Doesn’t know what Rooke asked him.

It couldn’t have been that long ago.

“You don’t have your phone?” he guesses, and she shakes her head. “No one knows where we fucking are. And no one has any idea.”

“Someone will figure it out.”

“Maybe not. He can talk to all of them. No one’s going to suspect it. We didn’t fucking suspect it, clearly, and it’s been going on this whole damn time.”

“You’re thinking what I’m thinking,” she says quietly. “About the demon.”

Dimara said it disappeared. And sue him, he’s not an expert about the damn things, but  _ why did it disappear? _  It had no body anymore but Tanis and Rooke were still there when Nadir finally killed it. Are there rules, for possession?

He has no idea.

“You said that getting him out of the house could have consequences.”

“I fucking did this to him. I got him out of the house—”

“He wanted to get out. We all wanted him to.”

“But if I hadn’t he’d still be fine. Or I wouldn’t have made him like, fucking susceptible to something attacking him. There’s a reason it went after him and not me, because I had never done anything that would have made me weaker, but him—”

“It’s not your fault,” he says. “ _ Shit _ .”

“What?”

“When Nadir got back,” he says quietly. “The day after, Rooke, he asked me. He asked me how long I thought I could go without blood.”

Neither of them  says  anything, after that. There’s no need to. It’s been two weeks already, and he said it himself. Between three and four weeks, it gets really bad. After a month and it’s completely unbearable, to the point where it starts to drive you insane.

He can smell Tanis’ blood, too. That’s the thing he left out.

He could reach her too. She’s lashed tight around the support, and even though he can feel how solidly he’s chained all the way through the wall, he’s got enough give that he could reach out to her, if he wanted to. If he was desperate.

If he was  _ starving. _

“Blair,” Tanis says, and although her voice is stunningly even there’s a fear in there, deep down inside. They’re both thinking the same thing once again, about where this is headed. It is. No one knows where they are. No one’s going to get them out.

And if they are, it’s not going to be quick enough.

“Don’t go there yet,” Tanis continues. He’ll really have to commend her on her stability, if they both get out of here alive. It’s unlikely. “Don’t.”

Yet. Because it’s an inevitably. Because  _ that’s  _ their future, regardless of what Tanis sees and does not see. That’s the path they’re walking down. The path that Rooke, or whatever is masquerading as him, has forced them on.

Interesting, indeed.

—

—

—August 28th, 2018.

Oddly enough, it appears that these people are trying to starve her to death, before Blair ever kills her.

Tanis doesn’t care either way, because neither thought is a good one.

One of them had come down on the twenty-sixth and given her some water, but that was it. He had taken a wide berth around  Blair and  snatched the bottle back before she could get too much of it. They definitely hadn’t given her any food.

Three and a half days. People can survive a lot longer than that, and she’s not expelling any energy anyway. She can’t hear what Blair can – everyone else moving on the floor above him. His eyes follow them through the floor like he can really see them.

But he can’t do anything about it. He’s tried for hours to get out and has only succeeded in ripping his wrists open three times over, before they would heal and he’d begin the process all over again. He’d stopped when she had finally pointed out that he could probably use all the blood he could get, and since then both of them had kept relatively quiet.

She almost wishes she could sense something, the way he could. It would give her a distraction from her stomach attempting to eat  its own  lining. It’s certainly possible, given some more time, that she’ll pass out from dehydration. Her mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton, and every ounce of liquid has been soaked up.

Blair’s head turning towards the darkness is the first indication that someone’s coming for them – a second later a door squeaks open. It’s Ugly, this time, not one of the unfamiliar ones. He’s got another water bottle.

“You know, if you don’t feed her you’ll be cleaning up her corpse long before I get to her,” Blair says flatly, and Ugly stops to look at him.

“Don’t give me that look,” Blair continues. “I didn’t say feed  _ me _ , because you’re clearly not going to. It was just a suggestion. Do you take those?”

This, clearly, is Blair’s distraction. She only wishes it was that easy for her.

Ug ly stares at them for a few seconds, turns tail, and heads back for the door. They both watch him all the way until it shuts again.

“So much for that,” she murmurs, but Blair’s eyes haven’t left the door , narrowing as one achingly long minute goes by.

“They’re going to take you up.”

“What?”

“They’re gonna take you upstairs,” he says. “ Listen, if you get the chance, take off. I don’t care about you leaving me here, just run. That might be the only chance you get. If you can find the others — ”

The door opens, and his mouth snaps shut. How is she even supposed to find the others?  And that’s even if she can wiggle her way out in the first place, which is even more unlikely. She can only imagine what they’d do to him , if she managed to get away.

She doesn’t turn, this time. Blair’s watching whoever comes back in anyway, and someone starts tugging  at the chains around the support – a second later, and they come free. She gives her hands a tug, but they’re still bound together, and someone grabs  the bit of exposed chain between them and yanks her to her feet so fast her head spins.

“Let’s go, then.”

It’s the unfamiliar one again. She’ll have to chastise Ugly on his  lack of will, if she ever sees him again.  But now she’s got more pressing matters at h and. She’s shaky at best, and her own blood is so crusted over on her face that she’d be surprised if she wasn’t leaving it in flakes behind her, as he half-drags her to the door.

She was out when they brought them both down here  in the first place . There’s nothing in the immediate area, just a set of stairs that he begins to march her up, and she blinks heavily a few times. Even if she’s not getting anywhere, at least now she’ll know her surroundings.

Maybe that will be her thing.

It’s dark – she didn’t expect it to be dark. He shoulders the door open and the only light she can see coming from the three windows on the first wall is nearly pitch black. Not ideal. She can hardly see anything outside – a long, vast parking lot, flooded with industrial lights.  Everything past that is lost in the blackness. Definitely nowhere close to any real civilization.

They’re in what appears to be an old, unused warehouse. Possibly  a place of employment, a long time ago, and now just used for storage. There’s not much in it. A few stacks of boxes here and there, some forgotten metal rebars and wooden beams.  There’s other doors and hallways branching off, stairs and a catwalk above her head, but she imagines it’s only more of the same.

Besides the old, yellowing lights above her head there’s one brighter, off in the corner of the room.  Exactly where he’s herding her towards now.  It’s a separate room, probably an old office, but all the blinds are drawn shut  and she can’t see what’s on the other side.

Someone opens the door just before they get there – Uglier. Unfortunately for her. The other two are nowhere in sight. It’s just the three of them. Not the worst odds ever, but he’s also still got a death - grip on her hands, and she  has no idea where an exit door even is.

She’s not getting out today.

“Where’d  Gordon go?” Uglier asks.

“Didn’t want her touching him, he said. We’re on feeding duty.”

“That’s probably smart,” she mutters, and Uglier stares at her. It’s like a break room, although there’s not much in it. A little counter space  along two walls, a fridge and a microwave wedged into the corner. The table and chairs all look as if they’re about to fall apart, but the one he forces her to sit down in holds steady.

So Gordon – Ugly – that’s one.  There’s these two with her, and the missing fourth.

And wherever the fuck Rooke is.

Neither of them speak, fiddling around at the counter while she stares at their backs  and then to the door, back and forth.

No chance.

Uglier finally drops a plate in front of her . A sandwich, and a few different  slices of fruits and vegetables , along with another bottle of water . The pieces of apple look like someone left them sitting just a little too long. The other one finally frees her wrists from the chains  and they both take a step back the second she’s no longer under constraint.

They’re scared of her. Not just of Blair.

Jokes on them. She can hardly move her arms.

The pain is so bad that she wants to scream, but swallows it every time.  Blair will lose his shit if she starts screaming up here, and she doesn’t want to give them the satisfaction. She hadn’t been trying, not like he had, but her wrists are still bruised and raw , throbbing with every sudden movement.

Both of them sit perched on the edge of the counter , watching her like hawks,  as she takes a bite of the sandwich. She wishes they would fuck off, but there ’s no chance of that. She’ll take her time, and then as soon as she’s done they’ll take her right back downstairs.

It’s the definition of a vicious cycle.

She does make sure to take her time, because of that . Blair’s downstairs, but that’s it. Of course she wants to go back to him, but there’s no other reason. Even though this is only bound to end terribly , she’s not leaving him down there alone. It’s just awful, down there.  It’s too quiet, and it’s freezing, and she knows none of that really bugs Blair but it’s already starting to get to her.  Their eyes watching her are too harsh , the burn of their hands letting her go foreign, when no one else has touched her for days.

A door slams, but  not the one to the room. Unfamiliar hops off the counter instantly.

“You can take her back downstairs. Have fun.”

“Fuck you,” Ugly responds, but stays put obediently. It doesn’t really look like there’s a hierarchy – if they are all from the same family, maybe they just get used to listening to each other. If they’re not hunters at all, she doesn’t want to know what kind of people they are instead. Any other option  that she can think of is worse. Much worse.

Unfamiliar skirts out the door, but holds it open, and she looks away faster than she’s ever looked away in her life when Rooke comes through the door, walking in like he owns the place.

Not terribly far off.

He doesn’t acknowledge her presen ce . Both of them follow him across the room, watch as he opens the fridge and takes a long swig of something. She’s not prepared for the moment when he turns around, and can’t look away fast enough. She’s looking him right in the eyes when he closes the fridge and leans back against it, bottle in hand.

“Long time no see. What’s up?”

She’s really unsure, if whatever this thing is has a naturally terrible personality, or if he’s ramping it up when it talks to her. It almost seems like the latter.  She stares back, silent, and her hand is digging too harshly  into the corner of her sandwich, leaving dents in the crusts.

He smiles.

“Can I ask you a question?” she forces out.

“Nah,” he says casually, and then drags one of the chairs away from the table to take a seat. “Not until you answer mine.”

Was he really expecting her to answer that in an honest way? He knows everything that’s been going on, is the one that directly caused it.

“The usual,” she says evenly. “Starving, dehydrated, chained up in a basement.”

She shoves the rest of the sandwich in her mouth, because even though she hates this she’s determined to get as much food as she can. Who knows when they’ll feed her next, if ever. She’s not risking it.

“How’s Blair doing?” he asks.

“Great.”

“I thought he would be. Good to know.”

Definitely just being more of a dickhead than he is usually. If this really is the demon out in the forest th e n it was creepy enough , said things that crawled under your skin and stayed there, but this is so much worse.

She didn’t know it could be this bad.

She busies herself with dragging the rest of the fruit slices to the edge of the  plate, but it’s impossible not to hear how loud the chair shrieks when he drags himself across the tile, directly to her side. It’s fucking creepy as hell – Rooke and this thing are both bad enough on their own, and the combination  of them is like hell itself.

“Why not just get this over with and kill us?” she asks , and he leans forward against the table.

“Now, that wasn’t the question you were going to ask originally, but I’ll entertain that,” he informs her. “Where’s the fun, in just murdering the two of you? While I’m sure the hunters  wouldn’t mind it, it’s only two of you. Two out of eight. Together the whole lot of you is a bit worrying, don’t you think? But split up  – God, you all agreed to split up so  _ easily _ . You made it so  _ easy.” _

Rooke offered to go with the two of them. If you really had to think about it, Blair’s one of the most dangerous, and she can be. Offering to go with Dimara  or Celia and Rory would have just been odd, and he probably didn’t want to deal with the combination of a werewolf and someone who can’t actually be killed.

They were probably the most tempting. The biggest prize of all.  And they gave themselves over to him on a silver platter without even meaning to.

“Can you not tell the difference, between me and him?” Rooke asks. “I was wondering if there was a difference, but apparently not.  If the fucking  _ witch  _ c an’t tell, then who can?”

She’s already dealing with the knowledge that she led Rooke into this in the first place, that they walked him right into the demon’s hands  and ruined him. Now this? Should she have been able to tell, all along, when no one else did?

“Can I ask my question now?”

“Go ahead.”

“Is  Rooke  still in there?”

Tanis wants to believe that when she looks him in the eyes that there’s even a shred of Rooke left in them.

It just doesn’t seem feasible.

“I wouldn’t worry about him so much,” he says, like he’s really thinking about it. “He’s all safe and tucked away.  Doing alright, for someone that’s been lost inside his own body  for so long. As well as anyone could expect, aside from the screaming.”

She forces the chunk of apple down her throat, and it feels like a rock. He pulls her half-empty water bottle away and rolls it back and forth between his hands, watching it. She feels like he’s pulling  _ her  _ between his hands, stretching her thinner and thinner with every pass.

“That’s the worst part,” he decides. “All the screaming. I can hear it all the time.  He’s so  _ desperate  _ in there, just wants me to get out.  It was the worst every time I would go near one of you.  Especially you.  Every time  I’d catch up to you or touch you or lay down with you – he’d just lose it.  And  sometimes the screaming was so loud I’d think  _ surely  _ someone else hears this? Surely someone else can hear him begging ? And yet here we are. Funny how that works, isn’t it?”

If there’s a single word for what she feels then, she can’t imagine what it is .  It’s a good thing she got the last of the food down, because her  throat has closed up so suddenly it’s hard to breathe.

This is where Rooke should be right there, where he would surely say it’s  not her fault.

But isn’t it?

He stands up and she rears away, but he still leans forward  and pats her on the arm, twice over, before he heads back for the door. “I wouldn’t cry about it. Like I said – he’s fine.”

Her eyes are filled with tears, and she feels like throwing up everything she just choked down.  She doesn’t really see him leave , nor does she see Ugly  get up, but she feels the chains close back around her wrist and is too numb to even think about fighting back, when he force s her up and across the warehouse. She’ll blame it on the angle of the stairs and the grip he has on her wrist, pulsing against her bruises ; the tears actually start, just before they  hit the bottom and he pushes open the door.

Blair is sitting exactly how they left him , and she’s crying so silently  that  the shock on his face must come from when he finally gets  a good look at her own. She gets dropped back on the floor in front of the support, and there’s no fight when her arms get pulled  back into their previous position, when they finally let go.

The door closes, dimly, and she inhales so sharply that she feels it in every inch of her body.

“Tanis, breathe.”

She doesn’t feel like that’s going to work the way Blair wants it to, but what’s going to happen if she doesn’t?  Will she give herself a panic attack straight into the afterlife ? Something so stupid has never sounded so real.  Talk about a distinct possibility.

Blair shifts, and all the chains swing wildly, before he stretches  out a leg and presses it up against hers. Not the greatest thing in the world, but it’s not like he can reach over and give her a hug,  and the fact that she’s already resorting to wanting a hug is worrying in itself. It’s only been a few days.

But the human contact is solid, reassuring. She blinks away some of the tears and stares at their legs. There’s nothing better to look at.

“So he’s that bad, huh?” Blair asks, and she nods dumbly. Blair still has no idea  about what they’re dealing with. She hopes he never does.

She had been telling herself that she’d be okay. Even in the first few hours of being here she had wondered if it was a lie, but this is the first time  she really feels it.

But it’s justified. She’s exhausted and her stomach is turning like it’s never going to stop,  and her tears feel that way as well. Blair doesn’t care, though, and she definitely doesn’t . There’s no one else around to consider. They already know, anyway.

And she gets the feeling it’s not going to matter what she does now anyway. 

She puts her head down on her knees , feels Blair’s leg press a little tighter, and lets herself cry.

—

—

— September 3 rd , 2018.

Every day they come to take her up, and every day they leave Blair down there.

He’s resigned to it, even the first day it happens. He knows what they’re trying to do, and Tanis knows it too.  They’re not planning on cutting him any slack; they’re going to leave him down there until it gets to the point where he can’t take it anymore, until he snaps.

And he’s getting there.

It’s gotten to the point where  he  knows soon that he’ll be putting actual physical effort  into keeping himself still and sane, trying to force the scent of blood  away. He thinks they’re getting real enjoyment out of keeping Tanis alive . If Rooke had succeeded in killing her, it would’ve been no fun for them. They would have just left him down here alone  until they were satisfied with how insane they’d driven him, and then —

And then what? He still doesn’t know what their end goal is here.

All the same, he has a feeling it’s going in a more terrible direction than he was imagining.  Even if he has no idea what’s really going to happen , the feeling is there, and it’s replaced by  the sound of someone coming down the stairs.

It’s not Tanis. She’s hardly been gone by two minutes.

No, he knows exactly who it is.

Unfortunately for him.

When Rooke  opens the door and zeroes in on him, Blair lets himself go completely blank. It’s the easiest thing to do. The safest. And it’s something that comes with a sense of familiarity , like the comfort of a favorite blanket being draped around your shoulders.

It’s comforting, but he doesn’t know for how long.

“What?” Rooke asks. “Not happy to see me?”

“Never met you before. Kinda hard to be.” ’

He sits down and leans against Tanis’ support, stretching out and wiggling his legs in Blair’s direction. He’s awfully ballsy – that only comes from someone who’s merged with something that can disappear at will.  If Blair even moves in his direction  he’ll be gone.

Because he’s a coward. He went for Tanis first, the easier target. Knocked her out instead of dealing with her. Hasn’t once dared to look him in the eyes for as long as he’s been down  here.

This thing has all of Rooke’s knowledge at it s disposal, his memories.  But you don’t have to have someone else’s knowledge in this situation to know that Blair could kill whatever this is in two seconds flat, if it was fair. If he wasn’t chained up and starving, waiting for someone to put him out of his misery.

“You know, I actually like you quite a lot.”

“Thank you,” he responds flatly. “I’ve waited to hear those words all my life. ”

“What, no rec iprocation ? Ouch.”

“To be honest, I’d have preferred it much more had you decided to go with someone else.”

“That’s not true, and we both know it.”

It’s not true, but he’s not sure what else to say. This thing with anyone else – fuck, anyone else would be dead. If he had decided to crash anyone else’s car with them in it  they wouldn’t have survived, and Nadir’s not as quick as he is. She wouldn’t have been able to stop it.

In truth, he’s almost grateful it was him. He knows he can handle it.

It’s Tanis that’s thrown the wrench into things.

“I kill her,” he says. “Then what?  Or is that all you care about?”

“Oh, I care about a lot of things,” Rooke says. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get to this point. A lot of people. A lot of bodies. ”

“So, you kill the Council, then you show up outside our house, kill Nadir, and take over Rooke .”

“Give the man an Emmy,” he laughs. “Christ, if it took you all this time to figure  _ that  _ out, then it’s no wonder you never figured out I was here in the first place.  You’re all so tragically naïve, it’s almost poetic. _  Let’s _ _  split up, everyone _ _ , surely that will be the answer to our problems _ . And here the two of you are. It almost makes you wonder what other atrocities have happened to everyone else.”

He’s very glad he didn’t give this fucker the details about what happened with Vance  and Kelsea . No doubt he would have found a way to use it against him by now , or he would have tracked them down when they were vulnerable. Hurt them too.

No words come to mind, at that. He doesn’t even think he can waste the energy on what the others could have been going through. He’s been too busy locked down here, wasting away, feeling inches of himself slip through his own fingers each and every day.

He longs to move fast enough to reach out and grab him, to strangle whatever sort of life exists out of him, but the only good it will do is chasing away the burning itchiness under his skin, for just a moment.

It makes everything else worse, in the long run.

“ I’m genuinely curious,” Rooke says. “How much longer do you think you can last?  It’s been twenty four days. Another week?  Two? I must say, another two would be quite impressive — ”

“How long do you think you’re gonna last ?” he asks quietly, and Rooke goes  silent . It’s an absolute fucking miracle.  If they’re on the topic of genuine curiosity, then this is his.

Rooke gets up to his feet  and walks even closer, until his feet are nearly brushing the sides of Blair’s legs.  Blair doesn’t know how to be scared of him. Maybe he just doesn’t really know how to be scared of anyone, anymore. Even the look in his eyes  doesn’t change any of that as he gazes down at him. He feels like he ought to be under a microscope. It would be better than being here.

“I bet you’re real fucking proud of yourself ,” Blair says. “Real fucking proud when you’re standing there playing at God when you know the only reason you’re even still standing is because I can’t get to you . And you better hope this all works out the way you planned, beca use if not I’m not the only one you’ll need to be running  from.  One day you’ll be out of  him , and — ”

“And here’s the thing,” Rooke interrupts. “Here’s the thing, Blair. If you knew how to properly get rid of me, your girlfriend would have done it in the first place.”

That’s what happens, when you get desperate. He doesn’t care what Rooke says or what he thinks or what he believes. All he’s thinking about is the fact that if he ever gets the chance he’s ripping this thing’s throat so far out of it’s body that it doesn’t ever see it again. That may be the impending bloodlust talking, but it’s doing a world of good for his current mental state. If that’s what he has to focus on to keep himself from losing it, then so be it.

“I think I’ll be here for a while yet,” he continues.  “You don’t always get what you want. The good guys don’t always win.”

“Believe me,” he says lowly. “I’m living fucking proof of that.”

He is. They both are.  Maybe they’re more alike than he wants to believe

And isn’t that the worst thing  of them all?

—

—

— September 6 th , 2018.

Blair put his head down three hours ago, facing the opposite way, and hasn’t looked at her since.

Tanis doesn’t think he’s going to be looking at her again.

She’s watched it get worse. Watched his eyes get darker and darker with every passing day, watched the black spread out from his eyes . She had thought it was only a matter of time until there was nothing left in them at all that was recognizable as human.

It doesn’t appear  that he’s going to let her see that happen.

They came down early to get her this time, or at least she thinks it was early. The sky was gray as can be, overcast in every direction. Rooke hadn’t been there this time , and no one else speaks to her. He’s been there a few times, but none since he came down here to talk to Blair. They haven’t seen a single sign of him since then.

Blair hasn’t really been talking to her, either. He’s slowly being driven insane from the inside out, his own brain trying to claw its way out of his skull to  escape the incessant thoughts. For the most part she just tries to stay still and quiet herself, trying not to agitate him.

Trying, as hard as she can, to not tempt him into killing her even more than he’s probably already considering.

That’s her life right now. She’s sitting chained in a basement with someone who saved her life a few weeks ago, wondering now if it was pointless. Should he have even bothered, if he’s just going to lose it and kill her?

If he kills her, it’s more game over than anything else before. She’ll be dead, no worries there. Blair will hate himself. Never be able to look anyone in the eye again, if anyone upstairs will even let him.  There’s no way he goes back to Nadir after that, not a chance in hell.

And it really is all her doing.

Blair’s suffering, she’s probably about to die, and Rooke’s  _ gone –  _ al l because of her.

She wishes more than anything that we would come downstairs and that it would actually be  _ him _ , that he’d let Blair go and get her the fuck out of here and find out where everyone else is before things all went south.  That they’d all be okay, not all in the middle of the worst parts of their lives.

There’s a part of her that almost wishes she could hear him. Even his screaming would be better than silence.

“We really fucked all of this up,” she says hoarsely. It could be  any day, at this point. Weeks, surely, but she has no idea how many days. There’s no telling how close Blair is to the edge, or if he’s already off it and just avoiding the inevitable.  She wanted to make this easier for him at any cost but if she’s silent too she’s going to go insane just as quick.

“I’m just fucking terrified,” she admits. “ I hate all of this and I can’t tell if holding out is worth it anymore or if you killing me would just be the easy way out.”

“Don’t say that ,” he replies, instantly, and she jumps. As much as she can, anyway. He still hasn’t turned around to look at her, and his voice sounds so off that she almost wants to believe it’s not him.  There’s an unfamiliar edge to it now exactly lik e Rooke, but there’s nothing in Blair except his own willpower and how quickly it’s dwindling away.

How many days do they really have, before it’s gone?

Because hers is gone. It has been for a while now. How quickly she gives up in the face of something so terrible, how weak she feels. She hates it, too, feeling like she’s crumbling beneath the weight of everything around her, waiting to shatter into a million pieces. No one will be able to put her back together, then.

Blair hands uncurl, and curl back up, knuckles white. It’s hard to see, when they’re still covered in his own blood.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Regardless of whether or not you think I should be, I’m sorry. I didn’t know the consequences, and I never know what the hell I’m doing.  I shouldn’t have done it in the first place.

She never would have seen the look on Rooke’s face, either, when she had come back down the stairs that night and he was standing in the middle of the downpour , looking up at the sky like he was seeing it for the very first time . That serenity had been ruined when Kelsea came charging down the stairs, crashing into him so hard she nearly knocked the two of them off the driveway and into the grass, but it hadn’t felt like it was ruined. The look on his face  paired with the overwhelming joy inside of her, spiking so high she didn’t think she had ever felt better – that had been worth it.

If that wasn’t ruining his serenity, then surely this is, right now.

“I didn’t tell you something,” she continues, and she almost wishes she could shut up, at this point. Everything she’s been thinking for so many days is finally spilling out.

Blair shifts, the slightest bit. She figures that’s the best response she’s going to get.

“When you were gone, when I went scrying, I saw something. Not Vance, not Nadir. Not anyone, really. It felt like I was just floating in space, and the only thing I could see blacker than my surroundings were these eyes. The face was completely unrecognizable but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t look away, and they wouldn’t  stop looking back. It let me turn around, finally. I think when you went to pull me back. But right before I got out  there was someone else behind me, and they were so close that all I could see were the eyes, again, but they were white.”

It’s a good thing she cried herself dry several days ago, or she’d surely be crying now.

That’s the issue with her visions. They never really make sense. It’s always little pieces of them that wind up coming true, completely out of context and in the oddest ways. They never fit together.

But these did. Of all the things that fit together, and these did.

“Those white ones – they were him,” she tells him, in case he couldn’t figure it out himself. “Nadir always said I looked possessed when I was scrying, because my eyes went all white. And the black ones…”

That she  doesn’t have to say. It’s a possibility that she’s just delusional and it’s something else. Maybe she  _ will s _ urvive this, and that vision will come true in a different way, several years from now. But when she’s sitting in the middle of this right now, it’s hard to believe it’s anything else.

Blair won’t turn around for her to tell, but she knows what she’d see.

She saw it once before, in her vision.

But those were worse. They were darker than the night sky  without a star in sight , the moon hidden somewhere far away . So black that she felt she could step forward and sink right into them. No one would ever find her then.

The same way no one’s going to find her now.

But that’s probably a good thing, she realizes.

No one in her life really deserves to be finding her corpse .

—

—

— September 14 th , 2018.

It’s really easy to make a human body cry, they’ve realized.

Even if it is dead.

It’s odd, how everything had merged together into one.  The spirit of something all too killable, stronger than any normal person , paired with that  of something that could disappear at will, a ghost that couldn’t really be hurt at all.

That’s the only downside, really.  Something could still hurt them. Even though they probably wouldn’t bleed, if they wouldn’t die, the pain still exists.  There’s so much pain, with all of these people. They’re not weak, feeble little bodies; not even Kelsea, who may look it sometimes. The only fragile body around is the one they’re in, and it’s fragile no longer. For how strong they can be the anguish is boggling, all of the emotions  they have.

But they’ve figured them out. It took them longer than what was ideal, but it worked out in their favor. Everything always did.

They hang up the phone with Dimara and set a timer. Buxton’s  not all that far, and Dimara won’t take her time. Twenty minutes, if that. Twenty minutes until they have to start the charade up again, although maybe they should give it an early minute or two, to make it look realistic.

She had believed them. Effortlessly, seamlessly, no questions asked. There was no reason to question it. Rooke was hysterical, believed the worst, and Dimara comes running. That’s how it works.

If only she knew the real story. By the time she does it’ll hopefully be too late for all of them.

_ Be there in five _ , Dimara texts them, fifteen minutes later.  _ Waiting on a train _ .

Perfect. He edges closer to the edge of the parking lot, leaning towards the road. The gas station lot is completely empty at this hour , and they haven’t seen a car go by in at least five minutes. Any that have went by in a whiz so fast they hardly saw them at all.  Dimara they’ll recognize though – the sudden slow and turn in. How concerned she’ll look when she catches sight of him.

All this separation, and for what? It hadn’t changed any of their feelings towards each other. In fact, it had probably only made them worse. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and all that.

They’ve got less than five minutes now, to make this seem realistic. To let their eyes fill back up with tears, to start the shakes. It’s easier than they thought it would be, wit h how much Rooke actually wants it. Maybe he thinks that he’ll finally be able to give something away through a few tears, that someone will finally see what’s really going on.

Everything’s a possibility, of course, no matter how unlikely.

They hear the car before they see it, peeling down the road. The light at the corner goes yellow and the car goes right through it. She’s going so fast she nearly misses  the entrance to the lot, and he takes a step back onto the curb as she pulls in . It’s easy to shake – there are nerves present there, too. They may have fooled everyone for a few days, Blair and Tanis for longer, but there’s no telling how far they go here.

They’ve got a story weaved in and out of itself, a phone and all of it’s texts sent out , a trip back to the mall tucked far away, where no one else can see. Far enough away, hopefully, that when it comes out, no one else will know the indiscretions. 

Dimara gets out of the car, if she even throws it park, takes one look at  what she believes is Rooke, and that’s it.

They were hoping that was all it would take.

“What the fuck happened?” she asks , but she’s already striding forward, reaching for him.  They let themselves get pulled into her arms, let the natural progression happen  as they bury their face in her shoulder, clinging to her tighter and tighter with every passing second. It feels so wrong, when they know where this is heading, but this is their path. This is how it’s been carved out.

And manipulating their emotions has turned out to be the easiest thing in the world.

“I’m sorry,” they whisper , and Dimara shakes her head.

“Don’t be sorry. Just take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know,” they respond, and they feel more like Rooke’s words than the real truth. “They got taken and I —  I thought I could do something on my own, or even find them, but I couldn’t. I should’ve just called you as soon as it happened .”

“How long’s it been?”

“Two days.”

“Fuck,” she says, and they want to laugh in her face. Two days. If only she knew how many it had really been . “Fuck, alright. That’s not great, but it’s okay. We’ll deal with this; we can deal with this.”

They stay silent , and Dimara pulls back and gr abs onto their shoulders , meeting their eyes in a way that  feels too invasive . Her fingers are gripping painfully tight, but not nearly as tight as Tanis’ were around their wrist.

They can hear it, again. Rooke’s awful little struggle deep inside their head, but it’s their head now. He’s not getting it back.

“We can deal with this,” she says firmly, and they nod. Frantically, jerky, until a few more tears spill over . Better milk it for all it’s worth, before any more tears refuse to come out.  Dimara believes the masquerade, for now. But there’s still everyone else to deal with, spread over so many more hours, and they’ve got a lot more work to do.

A lot more than anyone knows.

Keep all their facts straight. Check. Manipulate all the facts  until they’re unrecognizable, until they’re too good to be true. Check. Pull everyone else so deep into the web that it’s inescapable , so that when they realize there’s nothing they can do . Check.

Kill them all.  Let Armageddon begin.

Check and mate.


	5. I'll See You In Hell

** Bodies #4-7: **  Are experiencing quite a lot of regret, right about now.

—

—

— September 14 th , 2018.

Things haven’t been very quiet in Kali’s life, since Dimara walked into it.

And they certainly aren’t right now, either.

It’s  ten  in the morning.  Eight  hours since Dimara left. Seven hours since she sat there and didn’t go back to sleep, crying at the edge of the bed like that would do anything at all. She knew it wouldn’t. There wasn’t use in crying, when it would fix nothing.

But Dimara had always been there lately, when she’d been crying, and sitting  there  Kali couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d come back, that any second Dimara’s arms would be back around her and it would be fine.

It hadn’t worked like that.

She only crawled her way out of her room when she did because she had a family to meet for breakfast, two sisters who would come knocking if she didn’t show up, a mother and a father who couldn’t bear to not have all of their children around right now. She sits down at the table with them, in a restaurant they’ve never been to before.

They haven’t had a family meal together at the house since Alex.

Isolde seems to be the only one who notices something is up, and stares at her through their whole meal. Azaria chatters on – and on and on and on, and her mother laughs, though it’s muted, and her father sits the re  and smiles approvingly, and she feels like going into the bathroom and never coming out.

Things haven’t been very quiet in Kali’s life, lately, but they’ve been very quiet the past seven hours.

Her phone has also been buzzing incessantly in her purse, for about the past half hour, and she can’t bring herself to look at it. She shoves another bite of omelette in her mouth, takes another sip of orange juice, and keeps her mouth shut when Isolde stares at her incessantly, waiting for her to crack.

She’s not going to crack.

She will be everything she’s supposed to be. A daughter and a hunter and someone who hasn’t cried in the middle of the night  over half the days in the last month. She’ll close her eyes and shut her mouth and live.

It seemed a lot easier to do all of those things before. Now she just wants to scream.

Her father pays for the bill, like always, and her mother hugs her, like always. Azaria’s gone like the wind, and she flees down the sidewalk and gets in her car before Isolde can catch up with her. She only manages to drive two blocks away before she has to pull over, unsure of why. She’s not crying, and she’s not struggling to catch her breath.

So why?

She pulls her phone out of her purse, and nearly chokes. She’s got six missed calls, all spread out over the last hour and a half. Every single one of them from Dimara. Two voicemails, the first of which came in twenty minutes ago. The second one is only three minutes old.

She looks up, and her car is sitting along the library’s curb.

Of course it is.

She leans back against the seat and sinks into it a little, bringing the phone to her chest. Clutching it like it’s a lifeline but unable to bring herself to call back. Or listen to the voicemails. Maybe it would clarify something, but she’s not in the mood for clarification. She’s not really in the mood for anything.

She gets out of the car, and heads for the library.

—

—

—

The thing is, Kali has been able to pick a Fabled out of the crowd since she was a child, and she’s known about Dimara the second she looked her in the eyes.

She just knew. Not all the details, not right away. But the angel blades had given that away quick enough.

Dimara had been scared of that, and Kali could tell.  When she had found her in the bathroom at the family home she had known that it wasn’t entirely about the presence of everyone else, or at least that wasn’t the extent of it. Dimara was losing her mind, because her whole body was crying out to get away from it. Walk away from the threat.

She’s still clutching onto her phone when she heads into the library.

And like she said, she picks them out easy. Finding Zion takes no time at all.

She finds Early first, really, sitting on a table. She takes off the second Kali walks into her line of sight. Zion turns around from the next stack over and watches her hurtle off with all the grace of a man on stilts, before he catches sight of her.

“Hey,” he says quietly , and shelves something else, far above her head.

“What did she come here for?” she asks. “It wasn’t about her grandmother, was it?”

Zion doesn’t break stride. “Did something happen?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. “I don’t know, but I realize that I didn’t know much at all.”

On cue, her phone starts buzzing in her hand. It’s face down, and she keeps it that way. Zion still finds it, eyes narrowing.

“Are you going to answer that?”

“No.”

“Is it Dimara?”

“Probably.”

“Ask her yourself, then.”

“Zion,” she pleads. “I can’t ask her. I can’t, because — ”

“Because what?” he interrupts. “Because you’re worried you’re not going to like what she tells you? If you’re that nervous, then you’re convinced of something. Or at least you’re convinced it’s not good. If that’s the case, it’s not going to sound any better coming from me.”

“Zion,” she repeats. “Please.”

She doesn’t see Early come back, nor does she expect Early to wrestle her way between them like there’s any real wrestling to be done. “Zion, I need help with something.”

“No, you don’t,” they both say, simultaneously. Zion sounds like he says that a hundred times a day. She probably just sounds annoyed.

Early doesn’t like her, and she definitely doesn’t like her around Zion. There’s probably not very many people Early likes.

She’s clearly not going to leave, though, not until Kali concedes to do so as well. Zion’s not going to tell her anything. Does that mean it’s bad then? Worse than anything she could come up with? She’s a hunter for crying out-loud, she’s seen and done things that should be the worst of them all, and for some reason she gets the feeling she’s not really ready for this at all.

She hasn’t been ready for any of this, since the second she was born.

“Talk to her,” Zion urges quietly. “It’s for your own good.”

It is. But it might not be for Dimara, and it definitely might not be for the world.

God knows her world is fragile enough, right now.

—

—

—

Her feet have always carried her to the same spot.

Portland has been home since the day she was born, since she was old enough to recognize it  _ as  _ a home. It’s been a place of sanctuary , or so she was always taught, a place where they had control over the bad things that happened and the good things that were to come.

She’s never really felt that way, though.  If she had any amount of control over the bad things that happened here they just would have stopped happening a long time ago . She doesn’t want them anymore than she wanted Dimara to leave this morning.

In hindsight, that’s probably what makes her finally  open up that first voicemail.

She never gets back in the car. The weather is as dreary as ever, same way it is whenever Portland crosses over into September , and she draws her jacket tighter and puts the phone up to her ear. Her whole body feels like it’s aching.

She hears the line click, hears the very obvious sound of background noise on the other end, but no voice. A very quiet exhale , a shakier inhale, and then the voicemail cuts off. She even pulls the phone back to check that it’s ended , and moves onto the next one, almost expecting the same. Expecting it is one thing, though, and believing it is another.

And she doesn’t believe Dimara would have kept calling at all, if she wasn’t able to find the right words.

“Hey,” Dimara’s voice says , and it sounds weak at best. “Um – hey was a shitty way to start that, wasn’t it?  Fuck my life, um, let’s pretend that bit didn’t happen, I guess — ”

She breaks off and laughs, nervously, but the worst part is easily how petrified she sounds. Not just that, either. She almost sounds like she’s been crying, like her voice is about to break again in the middle of the voicemail. Kali would  know exactly how that goes, after all.

“I  _ know  _ this is shitty of me,” Dimara continues.  “And if you don’t want to answer, that’s alright, I don’t blame you, but I need to get it out  anyway  so I thought it might be worth a shot. I need help. Badly.  Like, more than I was sleeping in my car and needed somewhere to stay help.  And I ran off on you because I was terrified and didn’t think you could fit into any of this, but the worst part of it all is that I think you’re the only one who can.”

Of course she is.  She’s the only one that can slot right into what Dimara needs and oddly enough, she thinks that Dimara was the only one who really could have comforted her when she was so miserable and upset that she thought it might kill her.

Of course it’s the two of them.

“If you —  if you listen to this , and you want to call me back, that would be great. But if not that’s okay too. Just know that I’m sorry. I know I already said that in the middle of the night  but I’m so fucking sorry.”

There’s a pause. Kali waits for her to say something else, waits for the words that she can almost hear, suspended in mid-air.

The voicemail ends, just as she turns the corner to the coffee shop.

She doesn’t think they put shots in their coffee, but if she can bribe someone to, she’ll do it.

Her phone is still clutched  tightly in her hand when it starts buzzing again, and she nearly stumbles into the person walking almost alongside her. It’s Dimara again, no surprise there , and she grabs the door to the coffee shop. She lets the girl go in ahead of her, holding onto the door with a death grip, and presses answer.

“Where are you?” she asks. No bullshit hello to be found here. She thinks she deserves at least that.

“Um,” Dimara says, shock coloring her voice. “Right in front of you ?”

Kali looks up and nearly drops the phone.

It’s not their usual spot. That one is occupied by an older couple, mugs half-empty. Dimara’s sitting  in the booth furthest away from the door, all the way along the back wall. Completely alone , her own phone up to her ear, still. There’s no need for it.

Kali may have steeled herself into answering the phone, but she wasn’t prepared for this.

Dimara very slowly puts the phone back down on the table, but Kali can’t quite work up the nerve to let go of hers.  She was afraid of the sound of Dimara’s voice on the phone , at the possibility of it, and seeing it confirms it. She doesn’t look good. She definitely hasn’t slept any , eyes bloodshot and dark , messy hair tucked back into the hood she has pulled over her head. Kali can’t tell if she really has been  crying, and  doesn’t want to know.

“Shit,” she says flatly, for this moment and for the past month , and heads right for her.

Dimara stands up warily, holding onto the table. They both reach out for each other at the same time; Kali must’ve given it away in her eyes. She leans forward and hugs her warmly, tightly , trying to press herself so thoroughly into Dimara that there’s no separating them, that there’s no point to it ever again.

“We’re hugging like we haven’t seen each other in a year,”  Dimara says thickly, and Kali chokes out a weak laugh. Squeezes her tighter.

“I’m good with that. Are you good with that?”

Dimara nods  into her hair. At least that’s settled, and Kali’s re lieved.

It’s noon now. Ten hours.

“I’m sorry,” Dimara repeats, and Kali finds herself nodding along instantly, rubbing a hand down her back. While she’s grateful for the apology she doesn’t think Dimara finds it any easier, repeating it so many times.

She pulls  back, cups Dimara’s face in both her hands.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, yeah.”

“But everything’s not?”

Her smile is very poor. “Understatement of the summer.”

“You said you needed help,” she remembers. “You think I can help – what can I do? Just tell me .”

Dimara, while generally very warm  and relaxed with her, goes completely white in the face. Even holding onto her Kali watches her eyes flood with something; nervousness, fear. An uncertainty that’s so overwhelming Kali almost feels it.

“I didn’t think this through at all,” Dimara manages. “Fuck, I didn’t think you’d actually call me back.”

Dimara’s scared, and Dimara’s scared of her. Whatever this is, it’s bad, and it’s probably right alongside Kali’s forte,  which means it’s really bad. And whatever it is has a large dose of something supernatural, or Dimara wouldn’t be acting like this.

“Please don’t be scared of me,”  she  whispers, pleading . “You don’t need to be scared of me.”

Kali’s not sure how well that should go over, but Dimara only looks worse than that. Confused, for a very long moment, until the realization dawns on her.

Kali knows. Kali has  always known.

She envisions another breakdown, another panic attack. They already have a few people eyeing them, wondering what the hell they’re going on about in the middle of the shop. Kali drops her hands and grabs Dimara’s own, instead, and tugs her right out the door and onto the sidewalk, pressing close against the wall. The wind is picking up , and she brushes a few stray hairs out of her face, tucking them back behind her ear. Dimara doesn’t even attempt to fix herself.

“Listen to me,” she insists. “Whatever this is , whatever you are, that doesn’t matter to me. That may not make sense. You know who I am, clearly. You were —  you were following me? Right? I don’t think you planned on  me inviting you to stay at my apartment, but you wanted something out of me. Right?”

If Dimara pulled away from her and went sprinting down the sidewalk in the opposite direction  right now, Kali wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest. It doesn’t even look like she’s breathing.

So she’s right. She’s not often wrong, honestly.

“I talked to Zion earlier,” she offers. “He wouldn’t tell me why you kept going back to the library. Will you tell me?”

Dimara opens her mouth, and then closes it.  She’s saved by her own phone ringing , and she pulls it back out of her pocket, grimacing. Kali can’t make out what it says, and Dimara pulls it back too fast for her to ask.

“Fuck,” she says. “Fuck, I can’t do this right now. I don’t have time to explain all of this — ”

“Dimara,” she presses. “Don’t be scared of me.”

“Why are you doing this, then?” she bursts out. “You  fucking , you’ve known this whole time and you never say anything, you never think for a  _ second  _ d uring it that I may have some sort of ulterior  motive, and now you found out that guess what, that’s exactly the case , and you’re  _ still here _ . Why the hell are you still here?”

Dimara talked about being alone so often that loneliness sounded like her closest friend  in all of this . While Kali’s beginning to suspect that that may not be the entire case at all, that’s where this is coming from now. She sounds bewildered, and Kali can’t exactly fault for her.

“You asked,”  she says simply. “You said I could help, and I want to help. So I’m here.”

The wind blows so strongly between them that the canopy above them goes into a tailspin , and everything around them rustles. She turns the both of them so that she’s standing out into the open, Dimara nearly up against the wall. And for what? To shield her? It seems like Dimara needs a lot more than shielding right now.

“I was raised to believe that everything non-human was a monster,” she explains. “And you’ve known instinctively for even longer that anyone from a hunting family was even worse than that. ”

“You’re not,” Dimara tells her.

“And neither are you,” she says gently.

Dimara’s expressions folds , and her eyes begin to water. She flattens both hands over her face, dipping down towards the sidewalk.

“I’m so fucking terrified right now,” she says into her hands. “And I don’t even know how to be.”

Kali watches her. Watches her shoulders shake , watches everything shake so desperately that it feels like they should be caught in the middle of an earthquake. But Kali stays still as stone, until she can no longer hold  herself back, and wraps her arms around Dimara again. She stays dutifully tucked under Kali’s chin, refusing to pull her face out of her hands.

“Tell me what you want me to do,” she says. “Anything. Even just a first step, and then you can tell me everything else as we go. Just tell me something.”

Dimara considers that, sniffles, and then wraps an arm around her waist. “I need a van.”

“A van?”

“Yeah. For like, shit, seven people right now?  But I’m gonna say nine. I need to say nine.”

One person called her last night. The person who called her just a few minutes ago probably wasn’t the same one. That’s two , at least. Three including her. Six more, then, that Kali has no idea about.  Other people that Dimara’s so desperate about, when Kali thought she had no one at all.

She takes a deep breath. “Ten.”

“Ten?” Dimara echoes, confused.

“Ten,” she assures her. “What if I want to come with you?”

Dimara lifts her head up, and Kali swipes away some of the tears clinging stubbornly  to her jaw. The whole world has been a proper mess, lately. It only makes sense that they were to follow in its footsteps.

Dimara looks around, at nothing at all. Kali stands there and lets her gather her thoughts . Her hand is working furiously against the small of her back, clenching tight, playing with the edge of her jacket. She takes a  final  deep breath. “Then I guess you’re coming with me.”

Kali smiles. “A van it is then.”

—

—

—

Kali puts Dimara in her own car , steadies her until she can drive off on her own, and then stands there on the sidewalk until she has an acquirable van.

She knows people. A lot of people. Probably too many, to any normal person, but she likes people. Likes conversations and their stories and their quirks, likes talking when no one else would  and listening when anyone else wouldn’t dare.

So getting a van isn’t the issue. It’s everything else that she doesn’t know.

The van in question is from one Louisa Paxton, a far-off contact of the Monette’s  that lives on a houseboat in the pier and hardly ever talks to anyone, even Kali. You pay the woman and she gives you your shit, no matter what it is. Transportation, weapons , drugs, she has it all, and she’ll find anything she doesn’t have for the right price. She’s not a hunter, per say. All she ever does say is that she likes the money.

The text from Dimara comes in  while she’s coming back off the pier, keys swinging free from her hand, and she safely locks herself in the front seat of the van. It’s only two seats, both in front, and the whole  back is open. There’s two little benches to brought down on either side, but Kali leaves it be.

It was this, or a bus. She didn’t think Dimara would appreciate a bus.

The text is just an address, and she pulls it up on her phone before she dares to move even a foot away from the water.  It’s a motel just off highway 302, and she stares at the  brickstone  building  displayed on her phone before she tucks it  away, and  throws the van into reverse.

She has no idea what she’s getting herself into  here, and  doesn’t really care.

Right now, Kali can admit she’s in a bad state. She’s confused, and still upset , and going through a stage where loss and unpreventable things just keep  _ happening _ . Dimara coming in was like a ship seeing a lighthouse, from far out in the ocean, and knowing where to start turning in for home. It just made sense.  There’s  no enemies there, and  there  never has been.

But no one else would agree with that. If her family knew, if her  _ parents  _ knew, they’d probably kill Dimara and make her watch.

Or they’d make her do it.

And that’s the reason why she keeps her knowledge to herself. She’s known  Oeshe  wasn’t human since the day she showed up on her doorstep, waving the advertised roommate offering from the paper in her face. She’s known about Zion  since the second he smashed his head into the bottom of a desk trying to retrieve something she dropped.

And to be honest, she doesn’t think people have to know about Early. She’s bad enough on her own.

It’s not just them, either. It’s the one gas station attendant across from the apartment, and how she always disappears for three days every time the full moon rolls around. It’s the young guy living down the hall and how she always catches  him  up awake at all hours of the night. It’s the glowing eyes that reflect the streetlights when she passes by them on the street, the people that are there one second and gone the next.

Anyone could notice it, but not everyone’s trained to.

It’s almost a curse.  Every single person she meets she finds herself analyzing, trying to pick out what makes them tick. She’s no expert on supernatural senses – she doesn’t always know what they are.  Oeshe  could tell her she was a dragon and she’d probably believe her. It’s the trouble of knowing, and what comes with it.

Dimara wasn’t obvious. But Kali had sensed something in her when she turned around in the coffee shop  and caught her eye, in the way she had stuttered and stepped out of the way too quickly to be natural, not stumbling like anyone else would have. When she had reached into the backseat to grab her ba g  and caught a glimmer of the blades before they had been hidden away , it had clicked.  No hunter fights with those things.  But it hadn’t scared her , like it would have scared so many others in her family . She had never worried for a second that Dimara would use them against her.

What Kali knows, and what does scare her, is that Dimara’s not bad. And it’s Dimara’s goodness that can make everything else so terrible.

Dimara didn’t get a motel room at four in the morning last night. Someone else was staying there, and Dimara met them. Dimara herded up a group of people that she clearly knows, and now needs a way to get them around.

And Kali is walking right into it, like a damn idiot.

If only being a damn idiot didn’t feel so freeing.

When you’re a hunter, when you’re a member of one of the families, there’s little freedom there.  Any moment you could be called up to bat to prove yourself, to do something you may or may not want to do in that very moment.  That’s what Kali’s whole life has been, since she was old enough to recognize the horror of what was going on around her.

But right now, for the first time in a long time, it’s almost deathly silent, save for the tires on the road underneath, slowly as she approaches the entrance to the motel.

She pulls into a spot right near the exit  and kills the engine, looking around. There’s not much around here, and most of the surrounding area is filled with scrubby forest, before it gets deeper and darker further out. A curtain goes swinging shut in a window several doors down, and she stares at it until the door cracks open.

Dimara  steps out, and she releases a breath. She didn’t know why she was expecting it to be someone else, like this was a nightmare come to life, but  the relief must be palpable in the air when she steps out of the car, and  Dimara  smiles.

That smile is worth it. No matter what she has to do , she’s sure it’ll be worth it in the end.

Dimara  squeezes her, one-armed, and leans forward to pat the side of the van with her other hand. “Didn’t think you’d manage it this quickly.”

“What can I say, I’m good ,” Kali offers, and kisses her on the cheek. It almost feels like another day, easy as pie.

Almost.

“I’ll pay you back,”  Dimara  insists. “I have the money — ”

“I’m  gonna  take a stab and guess that you’re not actually homeless, then?”

“That would be correct.”

“Where do you live?”

“Up in Cape Elizabeth.”

“With…” She trails off, uncertain. “Not alone?”

“No,”  Dimara  says quietly. “Not alone.”

But Kali, if she’s good at only a handful of things, is particularly good at not pushing.  Dimara  still has an arm around her waist and doesn’t look quite so petrified, and she’s not pulling away in fear. It’s good, it’s natural. And she can handle waiting a few moments.

Dimara  glances over their shoulders, back towards the door. “I’m  gonna  sound like a dick with this, but I need to ask you something.”

“Go for it.”

“I know you’re not a threat to me. I believe you. But does that extend to —  to other people? Not just me?”

Kali glances back at the door, too, and doesn’t miss how ramrod straight  Dimara’s  back goes, how her hand tightens over Kali’s side just the slightest bit.  The door which she’s so certain was fully closed clicks shut again, and  Dimara  sighs. 

“If you’re gawking, you’re not being very subtle about it!”  Dimara shouts , but  looks very fond for a moment before it turns to uncertainty again, when she meets Kali’s eyes.

She doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into here.  She only knows one thing, really, and that’s that she trusts  Dimara  even though she shouldn’t, and they know what each other are. They know what they’re individually capable of. She also knows that she feels stronger with her  here, and  isn’t willing to give it up.

“They’re fine with me,” she affirms . She doesn’t even know who they  are, and  hopes it’s the truth.

Dimara  closes her eyes, and when she reopens them looks no more certain than she did a heartbeat before. “Alright, get out here!”

The response is almost instantaneous. Someone pops the door open  and peers out at them, or at least tries to before someone else shoves him out to widen the gap in the door. Kali watches them all ease their way out, six of them. Not one of them looks dangerous. In fact, she reckons more of them look scared than anything else.

So this is the seven  Dimara  spoke of. These six, and her.

And two more. She almost doesn’t want to know, what’s become of the other two.

She takes a deep breath. “Alright, let’s cut the shit. Raise your hand if you’re actually a human being.”

She almost expects  Dimara  to raise a hand, but she keeps both firmly where they are. Only one ends up moving, the blonde one at the end of the line, and his hand is instantly slapped down by the tallest girl, who glares at him.

“Put your fucking hand down, you don’t count.”

“But I do?”

“No, you don’t,” she insists. “You’re fucking dead, that’s not the same thing.”

“I still am,” he says quietly, but takes a step away when she glares at him again and keeps his hands firmly in front of him, this time.

Dimara  sighs.

So, this is how this goes. Kali’s standing in front of six people, the closest of which to human is the supposed dead one, and the one who has the most human blood running in their veins for real is standing right next to her. Kali is the only one  among them  that’s really not anything at all.

But if  Dimara  knows, then she has no doubt the six of them do as well. They all know what  she is, and what she’s capable of.

Issue being even Kali doesn’t really know what she’s capable of, anymore.

“Alright,” she says evenly. She steps away from  Dimara  and grabs her hand, instead. She’s sure a few of them laser in on that, if they hadn’t already figured it out, but no one comments. No one says anything along the lines of how bad an idea this  is, even if they’re thinking it. “Tell me everything. And I mean it. Everything.”

The look in  Dimara’s  eyes could say a lot of things, to a lot of different people, but to her it only says one thing.

“We’re really  gonna  trust her?” the other older girl asks.

“I don’t think we have a choice,”  Dimara  answers.

And if that’s the case, it’s bad.

It’s really bad.

—

—

—

“I probably shouldn’t have dumped all that on you at once,”  Dimara  says finally.

“Probably not,” she says, stupidly, head resting in one hand. She’s sitting in the back of the van, and her legs can’t quite get to the ground.  Dimara’s  sitting next to her, legs crossed, watching at least half of the six of them screw around in the field next to the motel. She can’t tell who, even though she’s been introduced, because some of them keep filing back into the motel room and some of them keep filing back out.

She can’t lie. What  Dimara  just told her is ten times more than she thought was going to come out of her mouth, and it sounds messier than most things she could have easily imagined.

“I just want to make it clear that I’m not asking you to do anything else,”  Dimara  tells her. “You’ve already done more than I expected to. And I’ll find them. Or Nadir will, because I’m sure she’s  gonna  fuck off and do it on her own if I don’t figure something out soon .”

“Is she close with the two of them?”

Dimara  mutters something, and then rubs her forehead. “You could say that.”

Nadir’s one of the ones that keeps disappearing back into the motel room, then, and she’s pretty sure Vance does too.  She has no idea what they’re doing, and probably doesn’t want to know.

“I’ll figure it out,” she says quietly, and  Dimara  gives her a look.

“Just like that?”

“Give me a day. I’ll figure it out by tomorrow night.”

Dimara  swallows. “You know who took them.”

Well, it definitely wasn’t her family, or Kali would’ve known about it. She’s doubtful it was just any random hunters for hire that pass by here, because kidnapping two people and keeping them alive would’ve taken more planning by that.

And if what  Dimara  says is true, about that threat that got left on their doorstep, then she’s known since the beginning of this conversation.

“The Monette’s wouldn’t have done something like that,” Kali says. “Any of it. They’re not aggressive like that. They wouldn’t leave a threat on someone’s door, or kidnap anyone. There’s not enough of them to support it.  But the  Amantea’s  – believe me, they are like that. They don’t really care what happens, as long as they’re still alive at the end of it.”

“The seal on that threat was red.”

“ Amantea ,” she repeats. “It had to have been them.”

“Should you be telling me this?”  Dimara  asks, and she shrugs.

“Probably not. But regardless of what I do ,  the  Amantea’s  are brutal. ”

“So is your family,”  Dimara  says, and then clenches her jaw shut so fast it looks like it aches, like she hadn’t meant for the words to come out.  She probably hadn’t.  Dimara  hadn’t kept quiet for so many weeks only to spill her true feelings now.

“Some of them are,” she agrees.  There’s no lying about the harsh reality of things.

“So are a lot of people,”  Dimara  finishes. “Fuck, I hate this. Do you really think this is going to work?”

“Have some faith. We’ll find them.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

Kali doesn’t look at  her, but  shuffles closer and leans her head against  Dimara’s . She’s not sure what else to do.  She relaxes when  Dimara presses up against her, grabs at her hand. Regardless of whether either of them  think  this will really work, neither of them care right now. There’s certain things they need, regardless of their rather bleak future.

“We’ll figure it out,” she says finally. “All of it.”

“What are you going to do  if we find them?”

“When,” she insists. “ _ When _  we find them. I don’t know.”

“Remember that I’m not expecting you to do anything,”  Dimara  murmurs. “ If it comes to that, we’ll deal with it.”

Deal with it can mean a lot of things, but if seven non-human things show up to tackle at least four hunters, there’s going to be bloodshed, and Kali can’t tell on who’s end. Either way, someone’s dying. She doesn’t want to imagine who right now.

“I know,” she replies. “I should probably go, it’s getting late and I have some research to do. I’ll leave the van here. I’ll take  the  car and come back tomorrow.”

“You sure you’ll figure it out that quick?”

“You wound me,” she answers, but takes  Dimara’s  offered hand when she hops out of the van after her.  She squeezes her hand , knowing just how much  Dimara  needs to cling to it right now. She doesn’t look nearly as awful as she did earlier, not as stressed or strung-out, but she still looks exhausted.

“Try and get some sleep tonight, hey?” she says. “For me.”

“Aye  aye , captain .”

She rolls her eyes, and is sure  Dimara  does as well, but that doesn’t stop them from meeting in the middle like nothing ever happened. Will there have to be numerous conversations that happen after this? Surely . But God only knows a conversation is the last thing she wants to worry about right now,  when she leans in to kiss  Dimara  before she has to go. She has enough things to worry about, including half the population of the field that no doubt looks to them in the same second.

She leaves  Dimara  to go out and presumably pummel them all, taking her keys  in the process. She sits in the front seat and watches for a moment. There’s no awkwardness between any of them, just a very easy familiarity that looks like it’s been bred for  _ years _ , even if Kali is sure it hasn’t been  that long. It just looks easy, and she longs for that. With everything and anything,  _ everyone _ .

Someone  starts pulling at the handle of her door, and she whirls around. Vance is looking down at her, slightly wide-eyed. She rolls down the window half an inch.

“Open the door,” he insists, and she only does  because he looks so positively frantic. He’s holding a backpack that she hadn’t seen initially, and all but thrusts it at her  the second he gets enough room to do so. She would have dropped it, had he not held onto it long enough himself that he was sure she had both hands on it.

“I need you to… take care of this?” he decides on. “Please. And don’t tell  Dimara , because she’ll kill me right now. I swear I can deal with it as soon as this is over, but not right now.”

Kali looks dow n and sees something  _ moving  _ in the shadows of the bag.

“What the fuck are you doing?”  Dimara  yells , and Vance looks up, going even more wide-eyed than before.

“Nothing!” he yells back innocently, not at all obviously, and then looks down at her again. “Help me.”

Help him with  _ what _ ? Clearly he’s been caught, caught giving her a dog in a backpack, of all things, and  Dimara’s  already ten feet away from getting back to them  trying to figure out what’s going on. There’s nowhere for her to hide the thing.

Vance tries to take off back into the room, and  Dimara  grabs him by the shirt  before he can struggle more than a foot away, bringing him back to the window.

Everyone seemingly stops when  Dimara  finally catches sight of it, eyes narrowing into impossibly thin slits.

“Is that a dog?”

“No?” Vance tries.

“Where the fuck did you get a dog?” she asks incredulously. “And how the fuck did you hide it from me for like, eighteen hours?”

“I’m pretty talented,” Vance manages, and she re-adjusts her grip on his shirt when he tries to pull away again.  Everyone else is starting to creep closer in the midst of their commotion, and all Kali can manage to do is hold onto the bag, and the dog.

“I hate you so much,”  Dimara  insists. “We cannot take care of a dog right now — ”

“I’ll take him,” Kali says. “Got it, can definitely do that.”

Dimara  gives her a disapproving look. Kali suddenly feels like she just did something very terribly wrong.

“Don’t encourage him,” Dimara  says. “And Kelsea —  fuck’s sake, don’t avoid looking me in the eye right now like you had nothing to do with this.”

“To be fair, she didn’t,” Nadir says flatly, and  Dimara  whirls on her too.

“You’re the one that let them do it.”

“Like you’d say no to it either. ”

Kali can definitely see where she’s coming  from – the dog is  tiny, and  looking up at her with the most adorable little eyes she’s ever seen, curled up in the middle of an old sweatshirt. It’s a distinct possibility she’s never readily agreed to something so easily in her life.

“Of all the things,”  Dimara  starts. “Of all the things to do, and now there’s a fucking beagle in  my car — ”

“A bagel?” Rory interrupts.

“A  _ beagle _ ,”  Dimara  repeats.  “Christ, it’s like talking to  a baby.”

“Its name is Bag el ,” Celia decides. There’s a lot of different reactions, to that.  Dimara  puts both hands over her face, and Vance takes a nearly huge leap away from her, groaning in the process.  Kelsea looks confused for half a second, and then smiles, nodding in agreement.  Kali has to instantly come to the terms that she’s now the temporary guardian of a very tiny beagle named Bagel.

Well, it’s not how she expected to be ending the day.

She’s not exactly upset about it, either.

—

—

—

Kali opens the door to the apartment, backpack in one hand, dog tucked under the other arm.

She puts him on the floor and watches him scamper away, deeper into the apartment.  Oeshe throws open  her bedroom door and nearly sends the poor thing flying, standing there still as stone as the  dog  goes trotting right into her room and under  her  bed.

“We have a dog for  the immediate future,” she informs her, and  Oeshe  slams her door shut.

—

—

— September 15 th , 2018.

She’s aware that hardly sleeping two nights in a row isn’t healthy, but she doesn’t have a choice.

She spent a lot of that first night crying. At least this time the choice is Kali’s alone, when she sits up all night  looking up contacts of the  Amantea’s , researching all their properties  and movement and talking to as many of them as she can without raising suspicion.

According to Rooke, they were in the middle of nowhere when it happened. Near Buxton, if where  Dimara  scooped him up has any correlation. The  Amantea’s  own nineteen different buildings in and around Portland.  Six are apartment buildings, and ten belong to the downtown core. Three are warehouses. One that’s right close to the docks, not far from downtown, and two that are out in the county, used for nothing but storage.

Kali  pulls out a map, circles three spots, and is out the door again  before dinner.

The dog, which she still can’t call Bag el  with a serious face, stares at her until the last possible second through the crack in the door. She has no idea where Oeshe’s disappeared off to, but there’s never any telling with her. She could be a million places all at once, and Kali doesn’t thinking asking will ease her mind any. Better to let  Oeshe  do what she wants when she wants to and not interfere.

She heads for the water first, after spending a full minute trying not to cave  into the literal puppy dog eyes, and finally succeeds in getting out the door and into the car without letting him come with her. This probably isn’t going to be the type of day for a dog , and hopefully  Oeshe  has the good sense to deal with it  when she gets home.

If she ever does. Some days Kali wonders if she’s just going to leave and never come back. It certainly wouldn’t be the most shocking thing she’s ever done since Kali met her.

The warehouse by the docks isn’t all that big; just suspiciously unmarked  and shoved smack dab in the middle of a rather unpopulated block. The whole thing looks like it’s been unused for some time. That still doesn’t stop her from nearly pressing her face against every single window she can fin d, trying to see anything beyond. The front door is shut with a padlock and chain, so thick that there’s no way anyone has gone through it recently. She tugs at it but quickly stops. Any more and it’ll rust right off – she doesn’t want to have to explain her grubby fingerprints all over that mishap, if anyone were to ever find out.

She doesn’t think there’s any real cause to , but she still drives non-discreetly past the vast majority of the other buildings owned by the  Amantea’s  that she can easily locate downtown. There are too many people coming and going out of nearly all of them . There’s no way a hunting family would be hiding two people there.

Or two bodies. She didn’t want to say it to  Dimara , but there’s a high probability they’re looking for corpses, and that’s the less macabre of the two options. The worst  possibility is them never finding them at all, and a week later both of their bloated, mangled bodies showing up on some rocky beach a hundred miles away . She knows they dump bodies in the ocean all the time. She’s seen people do it.

But she doesn’t want to imagine that. For  Dimara’s  sake, or for any of them. Regardless of her current lack of attachment to the others, she can’t imagine they deserve that.

Because they’re not bad people, the way so many others think. They’re the same as any one of the  people coming and going from these apartment buildings, traversing down the sidewalk, talking on the phone, rushing in the wind to get somewhere before the downpour comes.  Some of them have that aura about them, that suspicious nature, but almost none of them are something to fear. The things to be scared of don’t try to hide it.

She stares at these people for longer than she’d like to admit, and then goes and gets an extra large coffee, because she thinks she’s  gonna  need it.

—

—

—

Kali sits outside of the second warehouse for nearly two hours, watching.

There’s a half-full parking lot, and she parks directly in the middle of it, trying to be discreet. There are a lot of trucks coming and going , delivering crates full of things. Weapons, she would assume, but won’t get close enough to ask. If she dared to someone would probably recognize her, offer to give her a tour of a place if they were kind enough. That may be useful information to have if she thought this was the right place.

But it’s not. She just knows it. The low sprawling building looks alive, backed onto the  northern side  of Highland Lake, not far from Windham. There’s little in the way of infrastructure, nothing but the surrounding woods and the highway, but even over the sound of the trucks, even from so far away she can still hear the sounds of children splashing in the shallows , of cars rolling through the dirt and gravel before they stop at the water’s edge.

It’s peaceful. Serene. Nothing a group of  hunter’s  would ever in their right mind interrupt.  The whole balance of the world is terribly fragile, and they do the best not to upset it. Like the things they  hunt  they stay in the shadows  and let the world move around them. If they’re too obvious, if they leave too much of a mark, regular old humans start panicking.

Kali doesn’t think, regardless of the blood in her veins, that she’s a regular old human.

Regular old humans don’t like bloodshed, the way hunters do. They turn a blind eye to the cruel, ignore the problems until a hunter takes care of it. They pretend, in the naivest sort of way, that if they don’t notice it, it’s not really happening.

But everyone  _ knows  _ how much magic  is around them , is the issue. Everyone knows what exists. They just don’t always know it could be their neighbour, could be their best friend, could be their lover. And no one  _ wants _  to know, either.

Knowing gets people killed.

All these people milling around, all these people that belong to the  Amantea  name or not, they probably don’t want to know either.

She pulls out of the lot and stops again, just down the road, staring into the trees like they  know more than she does.

To be honest, they probably do.

There’s probably something staring back at her, right now. Wondering who this fragile little creature straying almost too close is, unknowing of the fact that she’s not fragile at all. She’s got  two knives under  Dimara’s  seat, now. One in the glovebox. A crossbow tucked into the place of a spare tire in the trunk.

She should probably take all of those back, before she returns the car to  Dimara’s  hands.

It takes her a while, but eventually she fishes her phone  out and pulls up her texts with  Oeshe . She’s sent about nine over the past week, all that have gone unanswered. Her roommate doesn’t have the best track record with that.

_ Can you come somewhere with me _ _?  _ she sends, and then sits back to wait.

There’s only one place left. If they’re not in the last  Amantea  warehouse, then she might have to admit that they’re somewhere else. That, or they’re well and truly dead.

She doesn’t want to be that person, the one to text  Dimara  and tell her that. She doesn’t think she could take it.

Her phone buzzes, and she flips it back over in surprise;  _ sure _ , the message from  Oeshe  reads, and then two seconds later  another one comes in.  _ but will you buy me dinner? and also come get me? _

Kali shakes her head, tucks her phone away, and turns back to Portland.

—

—

—

“So why the fuck are we here again?”  Oeshe  asks, mouth half-full of noodles.

Kali never in her right mind thought that the two of them would be sitting in the front of  Dimara’s  car, trying and failing not to drop their Chinese food all over the floor . There’s more of it than they’re going to eat, but  Oeshe  agreed so readily to come, and Kali wasn’t about to deny her food for it.

This warehouse truly is in the middle of nowhere. They didn’t see a single car once they pulled off the highway. There aren’t even any streetlights. Kali keeps both hands firmly on the wheel, driving at a snail’s pace , all while  Oeshe  tries to hand-feed her orange chicken every time she’s on a straightaway.

Even the forest isn’t dark enough to hide it, though. She sees the floodlights from very far away and pulls the car off into the dirt. The woods up alongside her window are so thick she can’t see more than a foot into them, but up ahead they open up . There’s a hundred yards of clear, wide open space before the fence surrounding the warehouse starts, but it’s ten feet high at least, topped with barbed wire.

“Someone doesn’t want anyone going in there,” Oeshe  comments idly, and shoves another piece of chicken in her mouth.

There’s a gate, too, a cheap fenced one tha t’s tied shut with a measly chain and lock. It’s not rusted through like the one in Portland.

There’s also a lone pick-up truck sitting in the middle of the unmarked lot , bright red like a blood moon. So obvious that it’s all she can look at for a little while. It’s not old, hasn’t been left there for an inappropriate amount of time. She can make out one ligh t coming from  within, and  sees a faint shadow pass by one of the windows before it disappears.

“You can stay here,” she offers, and slips out of the car.

She’s hardly ten feet down the road when she hears  Oeshe’s  door slam behind her, and footsteps coming scurrying through the grass to follow her up the hill.  They continue like that in silence, all the way up to the fence. The grass is at least long enough that they can crouch down in it unseen , but she still feels like every movement is making them obvious.

“Okay, tell me what’s going on.”

Kali shushes her, and  leans in closer to the fence. She could climb it, but that would be risky. If she didn’t cut herself at the top, she’d have to hope she could make a quick getaway. There’s nowhere in there to hide, no obvious door to run to.

“Did you know about  Dimara ?” she asks, and  Oeshe  looks at her strangely.

“This is something to d o  with  Dimara ?”

“Answer the question.”

“Not everything,” she says evenly. “Did you?”

“Not even close,” she murmurs. There’s a screech of a door  opening  and she goes completely still in the grass ,  Oeshe  doing the same. Someone’s voice  rings out all the way towards them, and a long shadow comes stalking across the parking lot. She doesn’t recognize who it is, but he has enough similar features. Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin. He could be one of them.

She just doesn’t know if could be is good enough, right now.

He heads right for the pick-up, though, and gets behind the wheel. He’s still yelling, and a second later the unseen door slams shut.

“Shit, the car,”  Oeshe  says suddenly. “If he’s leaving he’ll see our car.”

Well, shit indeed.

She leaps up and grabs  Oeshe’s  arm at the same time  Oeshe  grabs for her, and the two of them go tearing back through the grass. The pick-up is turned the opposite way from the gate, but that still only gives them a few extra seconds.  She swears she moves faster than she’s ever moved in her life  when she catches sight of the car, and even then  Oeshe  is still a few paces ahead of her, and they both throw themselves in as gracefully as they ever could.

“There’s a dirt road about a mile back,”  Oeshe  says. “Just turn around and pull off, kill the lights.”

They don’t have another option.  The closest road is at least five miles away, and she’s still unfamiliar with the land. Whoever that is behind them will catch up. God forbid they stop to ask a  question, or  wonder what they’re doing down here. God forbid they  _ recognize her _ .

Oeshe  nearly wrenches the wheel out of her hands, and Kali  al m ost m isses the turn altogether. The dirt road is more like a walking path, but the car crashes through the thickets and outreaching branches easily. She takes it until she believes she can go no further and then rips the keys out of the engine, dropping them to the floor in her haste. The car goes dark, and Oeshe swivels in her seat to watch the window.

A minute later the truck goes flying by on the road. It never  stops.

“That’s a fucking hunter,”  Oeshe  says. “Don’t bullshit me, that’s a hunter.”

She nods, unsure of what else to say. If she knows that  Oeshe’s  something, chances are  Oeshe  knows right back. If  Dimara  had an ulterior motive in getting to know her, then  Oeshe  could too. Everything she could ever have lived with outside of the family home could be a well and proper lie.

But that doesn’t matter now.  Oeshe  came with her, when she didn’t have to.

“If you want to go in there, be my guest,”  Oeshe  says. “But I’m not going with you. I don’t  wanna  die tonight. If you survive I’ll see you back at home.”

“No,” she breathes. “No, I’m not —  I’m not going in. Not alone.”

“Then who are you going to go with? Reinforcements?”

If Rooke’s right, then there’s four of them. One just left , but that leaves three still back at the warehouse. The chances of three people lurking around a warehouse for dead bodies isn’t terribly high. That means they could be alive. That means  _ we’re too late  _ doesn’t always have to be the truth.

And overwhelming relief floods her, at the thought that she doesn’t have to call  Dimara . She doesn’t have to tell her that two people she cares about are dead.

She doesn’t have to ruin her  life,  the same way Kali thinks she’s ruining her own.

“Reinforcements,” she echoes. “Something like that.”

“You sure you have those?”

Oeshe  didn’t know everything. She still doesn’t.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

—

—

—

A lot of things happen, in that next hour.

Oeshe  basically tuck and rolls out of the car with all of the Chinese food in tow  the second she sees their apartment building, with a promise to take the dog outside, if the dog will ever concede to interact with her in the first place.

All she texts  Dimara  on the way is  _ Think I got it _ , so the four texts and single call she receives on the way back to the motel are all completely valid in her eyes.  No doubt those four words were enough to cause an uproar in all of them, after so many other hours with absolutely nothing.

She has to calm them down. Tell them things. Pull all her weapons out of the car and watch them all stare when she does so.  There’s no way they can just go in guns blazing against four hunters who don’t give a shit about them one way or another. Most of the people here aren’t fighters the way they are.

And she’s not ready to kill someone she shouldn’t be killing tonight.

—

—

— September 16 th , 2018

“If someone doesn’t let me out of this van in the next ten seconds — ”

“Stay here,”  Dimara  insists. Kali’s not sure that’s going to work on Nadir right now, who looks like she’s about to kick  out one of the back doors if they don’t soon unlock it for her. Someone’s about to go out a window regardless , because no one here is going to wait for much longer.

“Would I be able to smell them if they were outside here a few days ago?” Vance asks.

“Why are you asking me like I know?” Dimara  responds.

“Well then, let’s go get Blair and fucking ask  _ him _ ,” Celia fires back. “I’m sick of this too, let me out.”

Dimara  gives the entire back of the van a very disapproving look, but Kali doesn’t think it does anything.  Dimara  gets out of the passenger side but doesn’t move for the back doors, instead taking a few paces up the road , searching out the warehouse that Kali already feels like she knows so very well, for how faint the glimpse she caught of it was.

A second later, Kali turns a very blind eye to Nadir crawling over the center console and out the passenger side door after her.

“I am not  _ s _ _ taying in the van _ ,” Kelsea says lowly, a minute later, to whoever spoke to her. Every argument they’re having, back here or up there, is going nowhere.  There’s going to be no keeping any of them contained in here, not once  Dimara  sees it fit to let them out. She thinks Celia’s about to be outside too, if someone doesn’t stop her, and surely the rest will follow.

Kali can’t force herself outside just yet, because she’s too busy focusing on her own breathing, trying not to panic.  This isn’t a situation she wanted to end up in ever, let alone tonight. When she traveled back to the motel she knew they would want to go right away, regardless of what time in the night it was. A stupid part of her had  wanted them to wait until morning, to wait several more days. That, or just tell her to sit back and not come at all.

She told  Dimara  she would be coming with them, but she hadn’t known the details then. She feels horrible now, like a hypocrite, or exactly like the monster she knows all of them are trying not to see her as.

Dimara  forces Nadir back into the van after a moment, and then swings herself back in. “The truck’s gone.”

“What?”

“You said there was only one truck – it’s gon e.”

“That doesn’t mean that all four of them are.”

“No, but it means at least one is, and I’ll take my fucking chances on the rest. ”  Dimara  leans over and re-starts the van for her, when Kali finds she can’t move. Her gaze lingers, roaming . There’s no way Kali isn’t visibly freaking out right now, thanks to her extremely vivid imagination.

“Do you want me to drive?”  Dimara  asks, and she shakes her head and pulls forward once again.

Up the road they creep, until she can feel the incline of the hill as they travel.  The gate is indeed wide open, chain swinging freely in the wind, and she slows to a crawl at the treeline, watching. There’s no shadows passing by the windows like there were earlier , but that doesn’t mean anything. Any number of people, even more than four, could be lurking in there right now. Waiting for someone to show up.

And if they are waiting, that’s dangerous.

“Everyone ready?”  Dimara  asks.

She gets a lot of varying responses for that – some head nods, some head shakes and some blank stares, and somehow all of them feel very appropriate.  It’s a mixture of emotions that she hasn’t felt for quite a few days, a cocktail that she was hoping she wouldn’t have to consume for a long while .

No person can go through  this many emotions  and come through the other side perfectly fine.

It’s that exact thing that gets her into trouble when they drive through the gates clear to the other side, with no sign of anyone coming out to stop the m. It’s an emotion she can’t even pinpoint, like something she’s ever felt before. The urge to reach  out and grab a weapon has never been stronger, and she only resorts to that when it’s serious.

Then again, is this not?

She stops the car again, ten yards out from the building , but no one comes running out. There’s no instant clamor from someone struggling to confront them, or even any movement at all. Even the light that had been there only a few hours ago is out now, and the windows are dark.

“Don’t ask me if I can see anything, because I can’t,” Vance murmurs.

“If there’s no one here — ”

She fixes  Dimara  with a look . “Let me go in on my own, first. That way if someone is still inside I can try and talk to them without anything bad happening. Keep watch out here, and I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

Kali has no desire to go into the warehouse alone, because she’s more worried about finding someone than she is about not. If someone is in there, by chance, her walking in won’t be natural. They’ll see it as a threat regardless of how she announces herself, and one of them won’t be walking away from. It might give the o thers more time to get away, but then what? She’s still dead. That, or she just killed another hunter in cold blood for people she hardly knows.

And two people that she doesn’t know, not at all.

She pops the door open when no one else moves, grabbing a knife and the crossbow, and steels  herself to face the inside, no matter what it may be. She slings both weapons away, even though her hand is still twitching towards them. She can’t look like a threat .

The door creaks – and creaks, and creaks, and creaks, and she winces along with everyone else, she’s sure. If someone wasn’t aware of their presence before, they are now. The whole place is dark, though. Cold and quiet, musty like no one’s taken a proper breath in here for years.  There’s a lot of places to hide, behind old boxes or crouched behind stacked pallets, but she slides very carefully through the pitch black, letting her feet fall silent on the concrete floor. All the training comes back  in one fluid motion, like she was born doing it, on two feet with a knife in her hand, ready to kill whatever came at her.

If only that was ever the truth.

The whole main room turns up empty , and so does the office  tucked  away in the corner. It’s been used recently, as would make sense, but it’s oddly desolate right now. There’s only a few more hallways, right around where she came in , and she waves her hand out the door, giving them a thumbs up, before she continues down them.

It’s just more offices, smaller than the rest. She gets to the end of the hallway, and yet another exit door.  There’s nowhere else to go  save for the stairs leading down, and up to the catwalk in the main room. She gl an ces down the stairs and  _ feels  _ nauseous at the sight of them, of how long they spiral down  into the depths of the building.

She’s no idiot. If there’s someone being kept here, that’s where they are.

But still, no one else has come inside it. If someone has to be the one to do it, it’s going to be here. She already resolved herself to that long ago.

When her hand lands on the handle at the bottom, though, she pauses. Takes a deep breath to ease the ache in her chest  and pushes it in, right hand drifting down towards the knife. Her fingers brush against the  worn hilt, familiar with the curve of her hand, and she feels better almost instantly.

If upstairs was dark, the basement is even darker. There’s nothing down here at all , save for the shadowy pillars that almost look like giants .

It’s not what she sees, but what she hears. It’s unlike any noise she’s ever heard before, not the sound of an animal but of something struggling all the same , the harsh swing of chains scraping against the ground before they pull tau t —

And it’s a good thing they do. It’s those chains, that keep her alive.

She hardly even  _ sees  _ him, just a shadow moving too quick to follow, and he’s coming right in her direction before he’s stopped by the chains pulling her back. He hardly gets more than a few feet, and the momentum sends him slamming back .

“Fuck,” someone bursts out, a rather terrified . “Fuck,  Blair, stop, stop  jesus christ — ”

If that’s Blair, definite  hungry vampire Blair  who’s  eyes are so black there’s hardly any eyes  _ left  _ to call them that, the veins so dark on his face that they look like extensions of the shadows themselves, then that must be Tanis.

She suddenly regrets being the one to find them.

Complete instinct has her pulling that crossbow  out, an arrow locked back and pointed in their direction. “Tanis?”

There’s another set of chains, bumping against more metal. She wills her eyes to adjust, to focus on the second person  clambered up against one of the pillars, trying to be as small as possible. Or trying to get away, when she can’t.

“Who the  _ fuck _ ,”  Tanis  gasps in response.  “Who the hell are you?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she replies. “Doesn’t matter, I’m with  Dimara — ”

“ Dimara’s  here?”  she says, and suddenly she sounds choked up, like she’s about to cry. “Is everyone — ”

“Everyone else is here too.”

“Nadir,” Tanis forces out. “Get her down here right now, fuck, before I have a panic attack , she needs to be down here.”

Kali has no idea if she’s really supposed to  listen, but  isn’t sure what else to do. She clutches the crossbow tighter in one hand and yanks her phone back out, frantically pulling up the text.  _ Tell Nadir to come to the basement, right now  _ she sends first , and almost hesitates before sending  _ no one else, I’m serious  _ right after.  Dimara’s  not going to handle that well. Are any of them?

This is not what Kali thought she’d be dealing with. Through all their talks she was aware of what she could be walking in on, but those talks never included anything like this. They didn’t include a vampire  _ past  _ the point of starvation, chained to the wall but still striving to get to her  and the fresh scent of her blood , a little witch who looks like she’s a ripe two seconds from a breakdown right in front of her. Kali takes a hesitant step forward, wondering if she can get any closer to her,  and Blair pulls his arms so tightly she fears she’s about to watch them both break, in his quest to get free. He’s  starving  and he doesn’t know who she is , if he recognizes her as a person at all  and if Kali wasn’t looking at the two of them, she wouldn’t believe Tanis was even still alive.

She hears the rapid footsteps coming down the stairs, and so do they all. Tanis opens her eyes and Blair keeps moving , practically writing in his own desperation. Towards her. Towards Tanis. Towards anything that’s breathing.

Kali can’t make her self pull the crossbow away, let alone her eyes.

“ _ Nadir _ ,” Tanis practically sobs. “Fuck, I’m sorry — ”

Without looking Kali can tell that Nadir is about to go flying right past her, without the situation having fully settled in. Kali throws an arm out to bar her and Nadir grabs onto it . Blair lunges  _ again  _ before he settles back on the floor, digging his fingers into the concrete.

“What the  fuck? ” Nadir ’s eyes widen , and she stops dead . “What the  _ fuck _ ?”

“Please tell me someone has some blood on hand,” Tanis interjects. “Please, or I’ll lose my fucking mind . ”

“Why would we have brought blood?”

“I don’t know , maybe because we’ve been down here for like, six fucking  _ years  _ and that thought would have crossed your mind at some point. Maybe I’m just fucking insane at this point, which seems likely, I don’t know.”

“No,” Nadir interrupts.  “No, it hasn’t been that long, it’s only been four days.”

“ _ What _ ?” Tanis bursts out. “ You’re not serious, are you?”

Nadir very decidedly cannot tell who to focus on. “Rooke said — ”

“No,” Ta nis whispers. “No, no  no no , tell me he’s not upstairs with everyone right now, tell me he’s not with you guys.”

“Of course he’s with us.”

“No,” she repeats, more frantic. “Call  Dimara  right now , tell her to get away from him. Get everyone away from him.”

“ Tanis ,  just calm down — ”

“It’s not him, Nadir!” she yells. “It’s not, it’s not fucking him, he did all of this. He fucking crashed the car, he got Blair’s neck broken, he’s kept us down here this whole time . There’s something inside him, that demon that fucking killed you —  it’s been that thing this whole time since then, it’s not him.”

Kali doesn’t know what makes her grab her phone again so quickly. Maybe it’s how quickly all the life drains out of Nadir’s eyes , when Tanis finally goes quiet. There’s nothing quiet about any of this – Blair is still struggling, and she can hear every single rapid beat of her heart, feel it in her fingertips. If she can feel it, can hear it, then he definitely can too.  She doesn’t even remember dialing  Dimara’s  number but a second later her phone is responding through the other end.

She doesn’t hear a word of what  Dimara  starts with. “Get away from Rooke right now.”

“What?”

“ Dimara , I’m serious,” she insists. “It’s not Rooke, it may look like him but it’s not him.  If anyone’s close to him right now get them away .”

Dimara  yells something far off, too far for Kali to hear. “He was with Vance – he’s gone now, what the fuck are you going on about?”

“Tanis said — ”

“You found them?”

“I found them,” she agrees. “I found them, but it’s been a lot longer than four days, and Tanis said Rooke did it, that something’s inside him.  A demon that could have possessed him.”

Dimara  doesn’t say a fucking word, not that Kali can blame her. She gets distracted by Nadir, who’s successfully creeped so close to Tanis that she can nearly touch her. Blair’s trying to keep one eye on each of  them  but his head keeps cocking back in her direction, at the newcomer’s blood and the arrow she’s got pointed at his head.

“Put that fucking thing down,” Nadir snaps.

“I’m not  doing that.”

“Put it down,” she insists, more firmly. “You’re freaking him out, you’re already unfamiliar and you’re making it worse. ”

“If he gets out — ”

“If he gets out, and you’re still standing there with that thing, you’re the first one he’s going to kill,” Nadir  points out. “Put it  down, or  get out. I can do this on my own.”

Kali’s hands are shaking so bad she’s surprised she even gets the crossbow back over her shoulder. Blair doesn’t go any less tense, not that she would have expected him to. There’s no human being about h im right now. Something glows in the corner of her eye – Nadir has a hand between Tanis’ now, wrapped around the chains that are tethering them together , and her palm looks red hot like a branding iron. A few seconds later and the chains fall away. Tanis launches herself  forward and into Nadir’s arms, and both of them back up several paces attached to each other.

Blair is pressed into the floor – hands, forehead, entire body. She watches the skin on his hands rip open but no blood stains the floor. He’s still fighting  it, still fighting the bloodlust, still trying to stay away from them.

“That’s not possible,” she breathes. 

“What isn’t?”  Dimara  snaps. “Talk to me, or I’m coming down there.”

“No,” she says frantically . “Stay there.”

“Tell everyone to get back in the car,” Nadir instructs. “You’re  gonna  take Tanis to the door , and when I tell you to you’re going back up.”

“ The car,” she says stupidly, just following orders. “Get back in the car, all of you. Blair’s bad. Don’t ask me how bad. I’m going to  come back upstairs with Tanis, and Nadir is…”

She trails off. Nadir finally  lets  go of Tanis, who winds up standing weakly behind her instead . Regardless of how steadily she’s walking forward Nadir is radiating terror right now, stepping forward still with a dose of caution.

“I’m going to get him out,” Nadir finishes. “I’m coming up after you, and then someone better shut the door behind me real fucking quick.”

So they’re letting him out. Is this really how Kali dies? She didn’t think this is how it would go, but clearly Nadir’s not willing to leave him down here, and even Tanis doesn’t seem so inclined to take off on them. Not alone, anyway.

Nadir gestures back at the both of them. “Door, now. Don’t leave me until I tell you to.”

Kali whirls around and grabs Tanis by the arm, no time for proper introductions here.  Blair is still fighting it, and she can’t tear her eyes away from how alien it looks . Blair doesn’t know  her  but he knows Tanis, and he knows Nadir. Tanis is still alive. Nadir is getting closer and closer, and while he’s struggling  not to leap off the floor he’s  _ doing it _ , miraculously.

“He knows who she is,” Tanis says in a rush.  “He’s not going to hurt her.”

Whether she’s saying that because she believes it already, or because she desperately wants to, Kali’s not sure. She can’t tell, and doesn’t want to know, but it looks like Blair’s hands are steadily making dents in the  chains around his wrists, the only thing holding him together.

Nadir’s above him, now, hanging overhead, everything about her completely still except for her hand, slowly descending.

“Okay,” she says evenly.  “ Five  seconds, and you’re gone.”

Her hand brushes against the chains. It doesn’t curl around them like with Tanis.

“What about you?” she asks.

“Believe me, I’ll be right behind you.”

Kali counts, keeping her breathing even. Tanis inches back, hand closing around the railing of the stair s.

“Five?” Tanis whispers, voice hardly audible, and Kali pushes her up the first few stairs, lunging up after her. It seems like there’s so many more now , and Kali hadn’t even realized that she’s still clutching the phone, even though the line’s gone dead in her distraction. She focuses on the stairs underneath her feet, on Tanis in front of her, on the truly horrendous sound that comes from all the way back in the basement . Not a scream, not a howl of pain – like a desperate , agonized shriek.

Kali only glances back down once, the second they both hit the main floor, and all she sees is Nadir come flying out into the stairwell.

Tanis is out the door without any instructions  and Kali chases after her. Someone reaches out and yanks Tanis into the back of the van, and then a similar set of hands drags her in after. She sprawls out on the floor, still with someone pulling her further in. She doesn’t get the chance to right herself  before Nadir practically leaps in after her, crushing whoever was in her path.

“ Door,  get the fucking door!”

Someone reaches forward, and the door slams shut.  Kali rolls over, still half on top of someone, and less than a second later the door caves in from the outside, creating a dent so wide that the door’s hinges squeal in protest . The whole window cracks,  even f rosted  over.  Someone yelps, someone nearly chokes on their breath.

“No one move, no one make a fucking sound,” Nadir  orders. Kali lifts her head up just enough to see, and then goes still.  Everyone’s here,  save for Rooke.  Celia’s somehow managed her way behind the wheel, and  Dimara’s  sitting next to her, eyes on the  rearview  mirror, trying desperate ly to see something out of it.

The uneasy quiet that falls over the van is deafening in its own right, and she hears the footsteps outside the vain with perfect clarity.  Slow, even, crunching over the gravel like the precise path of a true hunter, of something that knows exactly what it’s going for. There’s a shadow in the window above her,  no person other than him, and  Dimara’s  eyes flick to the right, trying to make him out.

They’re fucked. Well and truly fucked. Even if Blair doesn’t attack them right now, he’s going to give chase, and Nadir’s right. She’s going to be the first one he goes for, but with how bad he is, she won’t be the only one. He’s going to kill half this van before he reigns himself back in , and he won’t even know it.

She can hardly see him, but Blair’s entire head snapping around is clear even then . Past the car, towards the road out. It’s so fast it doesn’t even make sense. A second later Vance’s eyes slip open , focusing on the space between the front seats, out the windshield.  There’s nothing there save for the quiet night, save for whoever’s about to die here.

“Oh shit,” he breathes.

Headlights turn up the road, pointed directly at them.

_ Oh shit _  isn’t strong enough.

That’s them. Even from a distance the red pick-up truck is unmistakeable , and she goes cold all over. The truck comes roaring through the gates but slams to a halt at the sight of them, at the sight of Blair standing alongside their car deciding who to kill first.

She can’t make any of the m out, not enough to know who’s who. The one behind the wheel pops the door open without a care in the world, and she wants to scream at him to stop . He leans half out, bracing himself, and his hands come free of the wide open door clutching a shotgun , the barrel so wide that it could blow one of their heads off. He’s got it pointed directly at them too, completely foregoing Blair.

That’s his first idiotic move.

The second one is the click of the hammer moving back.

He doesn’t get any more chances than that.

The  gu n  goes off.  The sound c racks  through the middle of the night like a lightning bolt, so loud that everything within a mile will take off at it’s thunder. She expects it to shatter the windshield, to instantly kill whoever  it  makes contact with .

It doesn’t come anywhere near them, firing wildly into the night sky.

Kali looks over, and Blair’s gone. Blair’s gone, because he’s got a hold of the gun.

Not one of them actually saw him move.

He rips the gun out of the man’s hands like it’s a child’s toy  and cracks it  clean  in half. He reaches for the man with the other hand, who tries for only a second to rear back before Blair ha s  a hold of him. He throws him clean across the lot, where he smashes into the side of the warehouse, limp and bent awkwardly before he even hits the ground.

The passenger  moves for something. The wheel, or another gun , and Blair rips him right through the window on the other side, dragging him through all the broken glass  that they leave behind. He drops to the ground at Blair’s feet  _ wailin _ _ g _ , spewing blood everywhere like a faucet . The two in the back don’t  even try anything  to stop  it , looking like they’re about to throw up. The one closest to him  eventually throws open the door and tries to scramble up  and out . Blair’s distracted by the blood for all but a second until he sees  another body moving away from him, the chance to kill fleeing the scene of the crime. He yanks him back, closer , sends him crashing so hard into the car that the whole thing rocks and nearly tips over. This time Blair doesn’t stop to think about who else could run away, doesn’t think about anything except for  what’s right in front of him.

And she’s seen vampires attack  people , seen them do things she never wanted to see. Not one of those previous instances compare to Blair nearly ripping the guy’s neck in two , at all the blood that erupts over the both of them.

She sees his teeth, a second before they disappear into  the man’s neck, and all the blood like a tidal wave  pouring out . No stopping it now.  No stopping it ever.

Dimara  reaches over , violently, and turns the key in the ignition. She nudges Celia’s foot onto the gas and the car jumps forward , sending them all tumbling gracelessly around together.  She spins, searches for something to hold onto, and her eyes leave the carnage behind.

The massacre disappears behind them, fades into the night, but it’s burned behind her eyes.

She’s not sure she’ll ever see anything again.

—

—

— September 17 th , 2018.

Kali Zidane’s official new job title: insomniac.

No other job would be more applicable than that one . No other word to identify her, period. Not hunter,  employee, daughter – not one of them actually fits her right now.

The only reassurance she has is that everyone else feels the same way.

They drove off on Blair over a full day ago, now, and there’s still no sign of him. They drove far off , until they found a service station, and they haven’t moved since then. At least they haven’t. She mechanically got herself back home , where  Oeshe  had looked at her and said nothing , before she had sat down on the couch for an hour staring at the dark television screen, willing herself to see anything else.

She had only taken Bagel with her when she drove back because she didn’t think she could drive without a proper distraction. No law enforcement would be pleased to hear that.

It’s helping something, though. Kelsea really hasn’t let go of him since , and for a dog he seems pretty content with living in the back of a van. He’s got food, and access to fresh air, and plenty of people to cuddle up with , and that’s all he needs.

Kali wishes it was that simple, that she could eat and close her eyes and do it all again the next day without a worry.

Her life has never worked like that.

“Can someone tell me what I should be mo st  worried about?”  Rory asks, out of the blue. They’re hardly speaking right now, not any of them, all sitting in various spaces in the van. No one’s spoken in at least an hour, if everyone’s even awake.

“What are your options?”  Celia asks, when no one else does.

He shrugs. “Blair. Rooke. The demon, I guess. There’s a lot of things.”

A lot of things, and a lot of nothing to answer for it. Everyone’s just completely shut down in the aftermath.

Kali looks to  Dimara , sitting silently in the front seat. She’s been looking at nothing for a while now, gazing out the  window, eyes slightly glazed over.  Everyone’s got that look to them, like they’re somewhere far away. She almost feels the same way herself, but she can’t dare say she has it as bad. Everything they know just got turned upside down.  One of them is still missing.

Two, now. Kali isn’t sure she can even call what Rooke is  _ missing _ , when lost would be more appropriate.

“Worry about yourself,” Tanis answers eventually.  She looks better now, regardless of how many of the past thirty six hours she’s spent curled up against Nadir’s side, sleeping on and off. Anyone would look better after finally scrubbing three weeks worth  of dried blood of their face, of escaping the grime and darkness and horror all around them.

It’s always the eyes, though. Where everyone else looks someplace else, Tanis looks too present.  She’s nervous. Fearful. She can’t look Kali in the eye for longer than a few seconds , and she doesn’t think anyone else has noticed.

It’s nothing against her personally, and Kali knows that. If their situations were reversed and she was at the mercy of hunters for weeks on end, she probably wouldn’t be so quick to trust one either.  Not after she killed several of her kind, years ago, only thinking of the danger and what they could do  back if they got the opportunity . Averting her eyes when they got to the kids , unable to avoid the terrified screaming.

Her phone starts ringing, and everyone jolts. Even  Dimara’s  gaze slowly slides over to her, locking onto the source of the noise. Kali reaches for it, sees  _ Isolde  _ written across the screen, and scrambles out the back of the van.

“Hey,” she answers . “What’s up?”

“Where are you right now? At home ?”

Kali takes a deep breath. “No. The —  the store. Getting groceries.”

“Oh. Have you seen anything weird today?”

“No? Why?”

“Someone from the  Amantea’s  called Dad this morning, said that a few of them haven’t been seen since late Tuesday night. You haven’t checked in for a few days , I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Vance is hanging onto every word her sister is telling her, and everyone’s looking at him to get the words out.  Kali turns them over  in her mind. It’s not a shock, not at all. Just jarring that she’s hearing it right now, when she already knew.

“Well, I’m good,” she answers. “Thanks for checking. Everything’s  fine  at the house?”

“As good as it can be. Keep an eye out, please. I don’t want you going missing on us too.”

She nods, even though Isolde can’t see. “I won’t. I have to go —  love you.”

“Love you too. Call me tomorrow.”

The worst part is, she’s already gone missing. She hasn’t gone two days without seeing at least one of her sister’s in  _ years _ , since she moved out of the house. It’s a shock that one of them didn’t call sooner, if she’s being honest. 

She hangs up and turns back around. Everyone quickly averts their eyes, but Vance finishes muttering something and looks directly at her.  “We knew that they were dead.  Don’t freak out.”

She didn’t feel like she was about to freak out, not until Vance said it.

“Good fucking riddance,” Tanis mutters, and closes her eyes again.

It’s all justifiable. All the reasoning to want them dead is  there laid out before her, and all Kali sees laid out is their bodies and all the blood spreading out from underneath them.  While she doesn’t know him she almost wishes that Blair was back here already. At least if he was here she would know he wasn’t doing it all over again, wasn’t murdering an easy handful of people  like he did it every morning.

It’s rich, coming from her, and the family she belongs to that murders anything they see as a threat.

“It’s just not great,” she says quietly. “They already threatened you.  If they find out one of you killed four of their own…”

“Then we’ll deal with it,”  Dimara  says, and locks eyes with her in the  rearview  mirror. “We’ll deal with it.”

Kali really hopes that there’s still a  _ we’ll  _ left, at the end of all of this.

—

—

— September 18 th , 2018.

Somehow everyone is asleep.

Not her, but that’s asking for a miracle.

It’s pitch black in here, even with the streetlights at the edge of the parking lot. When one of them falls asleep it’s like it hands out permission for the others to follow suit. Even  Dimara  finally caved, and Kali shooed her into the passenger seat  so that she could drive, if something happened. Every so often she reaches forward to tap at the wheel, anxiously.  It’s not helping any. Her nails are already bitten down so far that they’re raw, aching whenever she bumps them against the wheel.

The quiet, even sounds of everyone’s breathing is keeping her sane , and the thought that there’s nothing else here, no one for miles. Nothing can get to them, not even Rooke.  Not that  she’s suddenly an expert in the inner workings of ghosts, let alone possessed ones, but she’s sure he can’t  show up here if he doesn’t know where they are.

It’s a relief to know that nothing is about to come out of the night  for once in her life.  No hunters, no ghosts, no demons.

No, definitely  not t hat.

Kali is so tired and high-strung that she swears she hallucinates the shadow that comes out of the woods . There’s a long, narrow strip of grass separating the trees and the lot, and its not until the shadow  steps just barely into the light that she realizes it’s a person , a dark silhouette.

Not just any person.

“Guys,” she says worriedly. Vance is the only one that moves , lifting his head up blearily to look around. When he catches sight of what she has he awkwardly flips  around , and  doesn’t so much hit Nadir as he shoves her sleeping form towards the back doors. He hits nearly everyone else in his haste , and she’s soon greeted with a wave of complaining moans and grumbles.

“Fucking move then,” Vance complains, and then shoves Nadir again. “Get  up, Blair’s outside right  now.”

Nadir had looked like she was doing her duty to ignore him as best she could, until he said tha t. She sits bolt upright, blinking frantically. Vance finally wins his battle and throws open the back door.

If Vance hadn’t confirmed it was Blair she would have doubted herself. She doesn’t know him, after all. Wouldn’t have recognized him before and wouldn’t have now either, if he wasn’t covered head to toe in blood.  And it’s the sight of her that stops him, too. Clearly he knew where he was going, sought them out even after everything, bu t  when their eyes meet  he must reconsider if he was right. He must know the others are here, and  Dimara’s  still asleep in the passenger seat , but she changes things. Her presence  makes him hesitate.

He’s still standing in the same spot when Nadir and Vance round the van, stopping likewise. Kali doesn’t feel a single shred of urgency to move or interrupt this.

Tanis is the only other one that finally scrambles  out of the van, leaving everyone else to watch on , but stops a few paces behind the others. Blair finally looks away from her and towards them , but even then his eyes are flickering nervously. She can’t blame him, not when a few days ago she couldn’t even see his eyes. Now that horror has just been replaced over with all the blood, dried over and stuck to him like a second skin.  She wouldn’t blame him if he was  terrified himself , either, feet unable to take him any further.

He proves her wrong when he takes a single, hesitant step forward.  His foot scrapes over the pavement, unsure, like he doesn’t even know what he’s allowed to do anymore , and thankfully Nadir takes the rest of the initiative out of his hands. Kali has to be impressed at the  certainty in her walk  heading towards him, in the easy way she holds out her arms and virtually lets him collapse into them. She would never have that resolve, would never be able to look at something like that and not think the worst.

But this is a relationship she’s not privy to, something she knows nothing about. At this point, it’s just adding to the already very long list.

Blair  stumbles a bit, like his knees are about to give out, and Nadir only holds onto him tighter until his arms come up around her, like  s he’s refusing to let him fall. It’s all very noble, very heart-warming when absolutely nothing else has been.  She appreciates it just a little bit , even if her brain is telling her its wrong. Her brain hasn’t been very reliable as of late.

Neither has her heart, though, and these people seem to be doing much better in that department.

She doesn’t know how long they stand there clinging to each other, in another world entirely , but Tanis is the one to shake them out of it.

“Alright, let me in,” she says, loud enough for Kali to hear her. Blair lifts  an arm up without looking , face still buried in Nadir’s shoulder, and she slips under it . And to think, watching him curl his arm around her shoulders now, that if Kali hadn’t found them he probably would’ve killed her. That any other vampire would have, in the exact same situation.

Like she thought, it says a lot about the closeness of everyone here.

“ Okay, I’m going,” Kelsea announces. “I don’t care.”

“Just pretend it’s ketchup or something, ” Celia offers , passing her Bagel once she slips out the back. Rory makes a noise at that, at how hard the idea of that will be, but it’s better than confronting the truth.  She watches them all file out and finally reaches over to shake  Dimara’s  shoulder. She looks peaceful, for once, untroubled, and the second she begins to stir Kali feels undeniably awful. If it was anything else, she wouldn’t dare wake her.

But  Dimara  would kill her if she did n’t , and right now there’s enough things in the world that would gladly start calling for her blood.

Dimara  doesn’t even look at her, blinking heavily, clearly disoriented. It takes her a few good solid blinks out the windshield to process what ’s happening right before her eyes, but once she does the response is instantaneous. She fumbles for the door, swearing, and then nearly falls out into the parking lot.

Only then does Kali feel right enough to step outside, and she leaves the door open, clutching at it with one hand.  By the time she feels comfortable enough to look  Dimara’s  made her way to  them , and  looks as if she’s about to hit Blair before she thinks better of it.

“Had to make us wait two days, did you?”

“Blame my extremely fucked up senses and their inability to find you any quicker,” he mumbles blearily, looking up at her  with a harsh  squint.  He lets go of Tanis for a moment to rub at his eyes, but it’s probably not going to do any good  with how bad he looks all-around.

Dimara  just sighs and squeezes his arm. “Honest answer here.  Do we have to worry about any of those four coming after us?”

He stares at her. “Nope.”

“I repeat, good fucking riddance,” Tanis says.  “Bunch of  dickheads.”

Even Kali is inclined to agree with that one, after seeing what they did.

“Bunch of dickheads,” Blair repeats. “And now I come  back  and it appears yo u’ve befriended one.”

Oh. He’s talking about her. That also seems realistic. His senses may be screwed up  but not enough that he can’t tell exactly what she is. He probably doesn’t even remember seeing her in the basement, but the fact that he’s not immediately trying to kill her now is reassuring.

That might be because Nadir is still holding onto him, even though she’s  taken a pace back.

“Don’t call her a dickhead,”  Dimara  chastises. “She’s the one that found you. ”

“Oh, goody,” he says, and somehow manages to make it sound sarcastic even through the exhaustion. “ Owing my life  to a hunter, what amazing karma.”

“You don’t — ” she starts, but  Dimara  looks back at her, and she shuts her mouth. Blair looks between them several times, eyes narrowing.  Finally he levels  Dimara  with a look so irritated that Kali doesn’t think she’s ever felt anything stronger.

“You’re  not serious?” he asks drily.

“Don’t even,”  Dimara  starts. “Don’t even talk  like you’re  not the pinnacle for weird relationships in the last five hundred years . Go look in the mirror and get back to me.”

“ I can’t even see my own reflection?” he says slowly, like he’s confused by the fact himself , and finally gives up and puts his head back on Nadir’s shoulder. Even Vance reaches forward to steady him, as it looks like he’s about to go fully over.  It’s weird, comparing the terror she felt at the sight of him two days ago to the feeling she has now. Clearly he’s not a threat; he could collapse at any given moment, and if it was just her here he’d probably already be on the ground.

“I think Jack the Ripper needs a shower,” Celia says flatly, and he makes a muffled noise of complaint.

“Oh, that’s a good one,” Tanis says , but she looks troubled. Her eyes fall a little flat , hands fidgeting anxiously, and Blair looks at her first before he looks at anyone else.

“So what’s happening with Rooke?” he asks.

If everyone looked troubled before, it’s worse now. “That’s what we’re all wondering.”

—

—

—

Things are very weird right now.

They’re so weird that she doesn’t even know how to properly explain them. She can’t sleep now, despite the time , and while Blair spends the better part of the next hour trying to turn a bathroom sink in to  a shower, she watches everyone guard the service station. Wandering around like they’re waiting for a car to pull in off the highway. She’s not sure what anyone would say to ward them off, but they’d probably come up with something.

She’s emptying the vending machines of its snacks , watching Kelsea walk Bagel all the way through the grass next to the road, when Blair finally steps out with Nadir on his heels.  He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t really look  at anyone. He actually looks like a human being now, skin free of blood in every direction, but that doesn’t mean he feels like one. He still killed four people two days ago, got starved and tortured in the process.  Nearly killed more than  that, and  would have if things hadn’t gone their way.

Kali waits until they’ve all trickled out, until several minutes pass.  When she finally steps outside  Dimara’s  the only one still out watching Kelsea , arms crossed over her chest. She’s still holding herself too tight, too rigid.

She steps up to her side and leans into her , but even then she doesn’t loosen up.

“So what now?” she asks.

“We wait until the morning, and then we talk about Rooke, I guess. I don’t know what else to do.”

“Why not now?”

“Well Blair just passed the hell out, and Tanis doesn’t really  wanna  be the only one to talk about it, so. I can’t make her. We’ll just wait until the morning.”

“He’s asleep?” she asks, slightly incredulous. “I thought vampires — ”

“Have sleep schedules so irregular it’s envious?”  Dimara  finishes. “Yeah, they do.  But he laid down and was out in less than two minutes. For him to be out that quickly – he’s exhausted. Tanis still is too.  They just spent nearly the past month chained and locked up in a basement by someone who isn’t even the person we all thought. ”

She can tell  Dimara’s  withdrawing, and she knows exactly  why. They’re both going through a lot right now, and there’s nothing they can do.

“I don’t  want  you to blame yourself,” she says quietly.

“Well, I am,”  Dimara  says. “Just – I should have fucking known. Just something,  _ anything _ . I should have been able to tell that it wasn’t Rooke before we all split up, I should have known that something happened to Blair and Tanis , or that it wasn’t them talking to me all those  weeks  but I didn’t because I was too busy stuck in a fantasy world because I thought I could just be a normal human being with a normal life.”

“Do you regret that? Staying with me?”

“No,” she says, rushed. “God, no. Don’t ever think that I regret you.”

Kali doesn’t smile, but at least some of the coldness inside her fades away at  Dimara’s  words. She tugs at  Dimara’s  waist until she concedes to lean into her as well .

“I don’t regret you either.”

Dimara  looks down at her. “You might, one day.”

“I might,” she says honestly. “But I don’t think I will.”

Regardless of how much the two of them have changed in such a short amount of time, Kali really believes it to be the truth.  Dimara  looks undeniably troubled , swallowing thickly. Even that isn’t enough to worry her. When you’ve been through so much worse, that almost seems like nothing at all. Dimara’s  working through things right now, and so is she. They can only work through them together and hope that’s good enough.

“Sometimes I look at you and wonder if you’re real ,”  Dimara  says.

“I always think that about you.”

Dimara’s  lips quirk up. She doesn’t need to laugh, because Kali has the sound tucked away in her head anyway. “Alright .  Touché.”

And if that’s the way that this night ends, then Kali is fine with it.

—

—

— September 19 th , 2018.

“So ,  someone tell me  why we own a dog now?” Blair asks, for the third time.

It’s only the third time because everyone’s refusing to answer. Vance and Kelsea keep looking at each other, waiting for the other to speak up.  It’s hard to avoid answering things in such a cramped van, though. A matter of time it is indeed.

“Well, it definitely wasn’t my fault,” Nadir tells him .

“Oh, of course not,” Blair mumbles. He still looks about half-asleep, and that above all else is definitely Nadir’s fault. She hasn’t made a single effort to force him off of her.  At least that’s clarified one relationship within Kali’s brain, even if she knows nothing else at all.  It really is hard to feel threatened by his presence when he’s like this.

She had thought that about them all, honestly, upon first looking them all in the eye. Hunters weren’t typically scared of the supernatural, not when they had so much control over their own fate. It was obviously difficult to be fearful of something when you had a gun to its head.

Maybe the fear she feels isn’t even really fear at all. Maybe it’s just the looming, dark storm cloud hanging inches above her head, something that feels more like a noose than that.

No matter how much she tries to focus on them all conversing, watching their repeated attempts to avoid the real conversation that needs to be had, it doesn’t go away.

Someone’s phone starts ringing in the middle of it all, and she finally looks up after listening to it chime back and forth a few times .  Dimara  finally succeeds in pulling her phone out , but when she does stops moving almost immediately.  She goes stiff, the lines of her shoulders drawing up. Her knuckles go so white she might as well be trying to crack the phone in half.

And she probably could, too.

“What?” Rory asks.  The phone stops ringing, but  Dimara’s  eyes are still on it when it starts back up almost immediately. She puts it on the floor in-between them all . Kali couldn’t see it before, not the way she was holding it , but the second she lays it down the name _ BLAIR  _ is visible across the screen like it’s been written in the sky for everyone to see.

“Oh, fuck’s  _ sake _ ,” Blair spits, and reaches for it.  Dimara  swats his hand away, and then Celia’s when she goes to do the same thing.

“Okay, okay, everyone shut up,”  Dimara  insists, and then hits answer.

Kali holds her breath so tightly her chest starts to ache. The silence is overwhelming; everyone else must be doing the same. She can’t hear anything  on the other end, either. No breath, no indication that anyone’s there at all.

“Silent treatment?”  Rooke asks. “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”

Even if he hardly spoke in her presence the first time, she wouldn’t have to know it. The reactions of everyone around her are  visceral, overpowering. If she wasn’t able to figure it out herself everyone else would have told the story anyway.  That storm cloud over her head grows a little larger, begins to spread over a greater area.

“Well, if no one’s going to talk to me this will be a short conversation, then.  I’ve only got a few things to say, I won’t take up too much of your time . Blair’s back with you, I presume?”

Dimara  could break the phone with her bare hand, surely, but Blair looks like he’s about to send it flying straight to the moon. Hell, they all look like that. Being upset can do a lot of things, and the quick transfer it can make into anger is astounding.

“Well, whether he is or not , I’m sure it’ll be lovely to see him still alive and kicking — ”

Blair snatches the phone up, and  Dimara  has no hope in hell of stopping him. “Don’t act like you didn’t  want me dead – you wanted us  _ all  _ dead, and you wanted me to do it.”

“Blair, a treat as always. Make no mistake, I still want you dead.  In the grand scheme of things I didn’t think the eight of you would be so hard to take out, when we want the whole town dead  anyway. Apparently I’ll just have to try a little harder.”

“What do you mean?”  Dimara  asks, loud enough to hear. “Cut me a fucking break and answer me this: why us? Why the whole town?”

“Why not?” he responds.  “What’s not to love about ruining the place from the inside out, turning it into a hellscape?  We love a good challenge.”

_ We _ . Kali keeps hearing that word, and it’s striking her harder than she thought it would. It’s not just the one inside Rooke, then. She was suspecting that, based on what  Dimara  said about the council and their first interaction with the demon, but that’s direct confirmation fro m a source that wants nothing more than to gloat and rub it in their faces.

“It’s a pleasure to finally speak to you,  Dimara , now that the truth’s all out. I will admit, though, I thought you of all people wouldn’t fall prey to the crying act . It appears we’re not all as strong as we thought we were, hey?”

Dimara  is no longer fighting to get the phone back. Blair is holding onto it at this point only because he’s not sure how to let go , or because this could be the last time. It’s not Rooke, it never will be in this scenario, but it’s still his voice. It’s still the idea of his body on the other end, taken over by something truly evil.

“I’ll give you some advice,” he says evenly. “From one fucked up thing to another. If I was you, I’d run. Run  fast, and  run far away.  You survived once, I’ll give you that, but you will not survive a second time.  Regardless of what the world calls you every one of you is still human, at heart, and humans are meddlesome  and frail little creatures.  If you stay, this place will be your grave.”

It will be their grave, like Rooke’s already is. Like Alex and all the hunters who died before her, dying for nothing. For a cause that isn’t true. If anything they did in the past was right or good, this wouldn’t be happening.

“If you stay,” he repeats, slower, but this time it almost sounds  like he’s about to laugh. “If you stay, I guess I’ll see you in hell.”

Kali’s not sure the phone line really goes  dead, and  can’t bring herself to care. Suddenly she has so many images in her head, playing too quick like a broken reel.  Bits and pieces of the worst things possible.  All the things that  should have remained  childish delusions ,  or an even more terrible fantasy – suddenly all of those things are real.

They’re real because this is hell, and they are here.


End file.
